Anderson Cooper and Michelle Obama: Navigating Grief, Making Loss Less Lonely, and How to Know the People You Love Before It's Too Late

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: 10% Happier with Dan Harris
Episode: Anderson Cooper and Michelle Obama: Navigating Grief, Making Loss Less Lonely, and How to Know the People You Love Before It's Too Late
Date: March 13, 2026
Guests: Anderson Cooper, Michelle Obama, Craig Robinson
Theme:
This intimate episode features Anderson Cooper in conversation with Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson, focusing on grief—how it impacts our lives, the often-lonely experience of loss, processing childhood bereavement, and how to truly know and honor the people we love before it’s too late. Through honest sharing of personal stories about their mothers and fathers, the group unpacks the rituals, conversations, and connections that help (or hinder) navigating loss.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Make a Podcast About Grief? (07:37–10:21)

• Anderson Cooper reflects on beginning his grief podcast after the death of his mother in 2019, the last surviving member of his immediate family.
  • Key Insight: The experience of sorting through family belongings after her passing led to feelings of overwhelming loneliness—a universal but rarely discussed phenomenon.
  • Anderson started the podcast to help himself navigate these emotions and realized many people need candid conversations on this topic.
• Quote:
  “I found it to be such a lonely and overwhelming experience... I thought, it’s weird that there’s not more stuff out there about this process that is so universal.” — Anderson Cooper (08:42)

2. Knowing and Understanding Your Loved Ones (10:21–14:48)

• Anderson and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, conducted a year-long intentional correspondence and dialogue, culminating in the book “The Rainbow Comes and Goes” and the HBO documentary “Nothing Left Unsaid.”
  • Key Insight: Most people only know their parents through the lens of “parent,” not as full individuals. Deliberate conversations can prevent regret and secrets left hiding after loss.
• Quote:
  “It was really important to me that when she died, she knew me and I knew her. And there was nothing left unsaid between us.” — Anderson Cooper (11:56)

3. Childhood Catastrophizing, Parental Stability, and Early Loss (12:20–18:55)

• Both Anderson and Craig discuss learning about death and loss as children — Anderson through early bereavement, Craig through a sense of needing to be prepared for catastrophe.
  • Anderson became a “catastrophist” at a young age, worried about financial stability, even working as a child model to save money.
  • Insight: Childhoods marked by instability or loss can create heightened anxiety and a deep need for control.
• Michelle notes how her mother frequently talked about death, imparting independence and self-sufficiency to cope with her absence, while their father embodied security and consistency.
• Quote:
  “I used to read my mom's journal... I started working when I was 12 to earn money because I was very concerned... I was building a life raft here.” — Anderson Cooper (13:04)

4. Generational Grief, Inheritance, and Memory (21:52–28:14)

• The power of artifacts and narratives: Anderson cherished a memoir his father wrote, capturing family stories that rarely make the history books.
  • Listening to old recordings and discovering family nicknames brought childhood memories to life for Anderson.
• Michelle discusses the difference in her approach: she prefers letting go of physical objects and values shared stories over storage units filled with family memorabilia.
• Quote:
  “It’s such a blessing to have this book ... It’s all these names and stories that never get told in history books... but it’s amazing to hear his voice.” — Anderson Cooper (21:52, 23:03)

5. Confronting Personal Patterns Around Grief (25:44–30:55)

• Anderson admits to never having properly grieved for his family losses and realizing, after finding an essay written by his father on “the importance of grieving,” that he had internalized a melancholy from unprocessed grief.
• The impact of suppressed grief: unresolved childhood pain manifests in constant vigilance and distance from others, a powerful survival strategy that eventually inhibits joy and connection.
• Quote:
  “...what happens to kids who don’t grieve and how they go through their life... with this melancholy they can never quite put their finger on. And I realized, oh my god, that’s me.” — Anderson Cooper (27:14)

6. Rituals, Culture, and the Loss of Community Grieving (30:57–33:03)

• Discussion of grief rituals falling out of favor in modern society.
  • Formerly, communities would openly grieve, attend funerals, and support one another; today, grief feels isolating and taboo.
  • Anderson describes the unexpectedly profound impact of a shared ritual at a grief retreat, demonstrating communal healing.
• Quote:
  “There was more of a commons of the soul. There was more of a community aspect to grief that has been shunted aside as taboos changed.” — Anderson Cooper (32:00)

7. How to Be There for Others in Grief (37:26–41:08)

• Simple, human questions (“How did you meet?”) are more meaningful than perfunctory condolences; connection lies in inviting stories about loved ones, not asking for details about death.
  • Craig admits to struggling with what to say to grieving people, fearing to intrude or trigger pain. Anderson insists that most grieving people want a chance to talk.
• Quote:
  “I generally won’t ask, well, what did they die of? ... I’ll usually ask... How did you meet? Immediately someone smiles and has this story...” — Anderson Cooper (38:17)

8. Different Approaches to Grieving and Memory (42:57–50:24)

• Michelle is “notoriously not a saver” and finds less value in holding on to objects; for her, sharing memories is the best way to honor those who’ve died.
• Anderson’s mother, in contrast, compulsively kept and retrieved family heirlooms, experiencing the pain of loss through attachment to objects—a result of her traumatic and unstable upbringing.
  • Lesson: There is no single way to grieve; for some, things are hurdles, for others, stories heal.

9. Informing the Next Generation: Parenting and Heritage (50:41–56:56)

• Anderson and Michelle discuss the importance of transmitting family stories rather than material possessions. Anderson made an effort to reclaim his own family’s narratives in order to ground his children and spare them both the burden of stuff and the ache of historical disconnection.
• Quote:
  “For me, stories matter... Pass those stories on to our kids as a better way of honoring our elders... than with a storage room full of their stuff.” — Michelle Obama (49:14)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ritual and grieving in community (32:00):
  "There was more of a commons of the soul... Communal aspect to grief has been shunted aside as taboos changed. It used to be you couldn't talk about sex, but death and grief you talked about. Now you can talk about sex, but you can't talk about grief."
• On support and empathy (69:24):
  “Just that process of offering gentleness is helpful… Maybe it feels less lonely if we all see us as people in this process together and it all hurts. And whether you had a great relationship... or whatever their age... it’s a thing that happens. And if we could just be more gentle... that’s the power of kindness and empathy.” – Michelle Obama
• On living a life that honors those we’ve lost (71:08):
  “All you can do is once you leave somebody is to live a life worthy of theirs … I’m honoring Marian and Fraser by showing up every day in a way that would honor them.” – Michelle Obama

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Memorable Segment Timestamps

• 07:37 – Why Anderson Cooper began exploring grief publicly
• 11:56 – The idea of having “nothing left unsaid” with loved ones
• 13:04 – Anderson as a catastrophist child
• 18:55 – Michelle on how her mother prepared her for independence and loss
• 23:03 – Hearing his father’s voice again after decades
• 27:14 – The pivotal moment of finding his father’s essay on grieving
• 31:48 – How cultural rituals around grief have changed
• 38:17 – The power of asking about the life, not the death, of lost loved ones
• 49:14 – Michelle on stories vs. stuff as a legacy
• 54:49 – The urgent need to collect stories before it’s too late
• 58:10 – Listener question (Nancy) on processing the loss of both parents
• 61:55 – The importance of knowing you were loved before loss
• 64:56 – “You never get over it” — embracing grief as a companion, not a hurdle
• 69:24 – The healing power of gentleness and community
• 71:08 – Living a life worthy of your loved ones’ memory

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Practical Advice & Reflections

• Grief is individual: There’s no right way to process loss; avoidance, object-attachment, storytelling, ritual all reflect different needs and family histories.
• Invite stories, not silence: When comforting grievers, favor questions about life and relationships over the circumstances of death.
• Share stories now: Don’t wait. Have intentional, honest conversations with parents and elders; learn their histories and transmit them.
• Community is healing: Support groups or communal rituals can alleviate the loneliness of grief by validating feelings and sharing burdens.
• Grief is ongoing: There’s no endpoint; it becomes an integral, sometimes joyful, sometimes aching part of those left behind.

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Summary

This moving episode offers rare, honest insight into how influential public figures—Anderson Cooper, Michelle Obama, and Craig Robinson—experience and navigate grief. Through authentic storytelling and emotional candor, they break open the silence around loss, revealing that while the pain of missing loved ones never fully recedes, it transforms into a lifelong relationship—a source of connection, meaning, and sometimes, healing laughter. The episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking comfort in loss or guidance in opening difficult but necessary family conversations.

Transcript

[Dan Harris]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. Today we're doing what's called a feed drop. That means we're taking an episode from another podcast and dropping it down our feed. We do this occasionally when there's a show we really like and we think you might like. This is a great way to just kind of let you know to taste test. The show we're highlighting today is hosted by Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the United States of America. And it's co hosted with her big brother, Craig Robinson. And the show is called imo. Anyway, you know how on this show our whole goal is to translate complex ideas into from modern science and ancient wisdom and turn them into actionable advice that you can put to use in your everyday life? Well, that's quite similar. What Michelle and Craig are aiming to do over on imo. Their goal is to bring you candid, useful perspectives on the everyday questions that shape your life, your relationships, and the world around us. Each week they're joined by a guest to tackle real questions from real people just like you and then to serve up practical advice, personal storytelling and and some laughter. In the episode you're about to hear, Anderson Cooper from CNN shares what he has learned about grief. Anderson has done some incredible work publicly on the often very private issue of grief with which he has, unfortunately, a lot of experience. So what you're about to hear is Craig and Michelle and Anderson talking about how they have managed or frankly avoided the grieving process and how their moms prepared their children to live without them. I hope you enjoy it. Real quick, before we dive in, I just want to tell you about the meditation challenge we're running over on my new app which is called 10% with Dan Harris. The challenge runs from March 23rd through the 27th. It's a five day meditation challenge inspired by my new Audible original. It's an audiobook called Even you can meditate, which I co wrote and co recorded with 7A Selassie, my friend, the great meditation teacher. Here's how the challenge will work. Every morning you'll get a new guided meditation from Seb. And then twice during the course of the five days, Seb and I will do a live video meditation and Q and A session where we can all practice together and you can get your questions answered. There's no need to register. It will be available exclusively on the 10% with Dan Harris app. So head to danharris.com to join us. All right, we'll get started with Craig Robinson Michelle Obama and Anderson Cooper. And just to say, you can get more episodes of IMO wherever you get your podcasts.

[Craig Robinson]

The only connection to the Vanderbilts I had as a kid, my dad once took me to Grand Central Station, which was founded by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was not a nice guy. And there's a statue of him outside Grand Central Station, which, by the way, he paid for and had made and set up there. And it wasn't like his workers loved him.

[Michelle Obama]

And he did it.

[Craig Robinson]

It was his. And he made photographs, he had paintings, painted himself and gave them out to all. Not that they wanted them either, but. But I remember my dad taking me to see this statue when I was like six. And the only thing I took away from it was that grandparents turned into statues when they die, which is very relatable. I know everybody feels this.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Meesh.

[Michelle Obama]

Hi, Craig Robinson.

[Dan Harris]

How are you?

[Michelle Obama]

I'm good, I'm good. How are you?

[Dan Harris]

I'm fine, fine. I'm having such a good time out here in la.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah. So you've got some company with you this trip.

[Dan Harris]

So this trip, Aaron, our youngest, our fourth is here. And Kelly Robinson. Kelly made a. Yes, yes. Kelly.

[Michelle Obama]

Kelly.

[Dan Harris]

Give it up for her.

[Michelle Obama]

She left Milwaukee to be here. Kelly in the house.

[Dan Harris]

Kelly's known to the whole staff only by her emails.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah, Kelly's emails are infamous. Kelly Wu, I can count. This is my. What I love about my sister in law, details, you know, there is no detail, which is why I don't communicate with you. You have no information, you give nothing. If I want to know what's going on, I'm like, excuse me, Kelly, tell me what's happening in your life and I will get the rundown right?

[Dan Harris]

You will.

[Michelle Obama]

Your wife is like, I tell her, she's, you know, I'd hire her in a minute as a chief of staff to run anything, any office, any project. She, you know.

[Dan Harris]

Well, you'll love this because, you know, we, Aaron and I have been staying in our Airbnb, which has been terrific.

[Michelle Obama]

Have a normal life while you're away for a week.

[Dan Harris]

We cooked breakfast this morning.

[Michelle Obama]

What'd you make?

[Dan Harris]

So we.

[Michelle Obama]

As in Aaron and I?

[Dan Harris]

Aaron and I. So we boiled eggs last night so we can have our, you know, it's

[Michelle Obama]

always, he says he cooking breakfast. Like everybody here knows I cooked breakfast. And he boiled some eggs.

[Dan Harris]

I got into the.

[Michelle Obama]

Okay, finished with it.

[Dan Harris]

We had to fix some other things to go with the eggs.

[Michelle Obama]

And don't say, don't say toast and fruit.

[Dan Harris]

Toast and fruit. And Aaron made himself Waffles. Oh, now that's frozen. Well, in the toaster.

[Michelle Obama]

Okay. All right.

[Dan Harris]

Well, you know, we're.

[Michelle Obama]

But you bachelors.

[Dan Harris]

We're two bachelors.

[Michelle Obama]

Two bachelors living life in your Airbnb.

[Dan Harris]

We're living life. And so did you have to rent

[Michelle Obama]

a car this time?

[Dan Harris]

No, no, we. We haven't. But Kelly, of course, rented a car because she figured out that that was cheaper than taking Ubers, so.

[Michelle Obama]

And that's the other thing about Kelly. Not a penny wasted. Not a penny. It's like, yeah, she knows the cost of Uber. She's probably priced out all the Uber trips that are gonna be taken in this trip and decided. We're renting.

[Dan Harris]

Yes.

[Michelle Obama]

We're renting a car.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

It's better.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah. Yeah. But if. If we could rent a car that we wanted, I would've rented a Rivian.

[Michelle Obama]

You know, they're sleek and clean. And Kelly's just now starting to drive the Rivian. Are you now? Is she. Kelly's. Kelly's getting in on the Rivian action. Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah. Our listeners, as they know, Rivian. Both of us, Cars this past year, and we've had fun driving them.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, we've got a great, great show, great guest, someone who so many of us know, he's been in our living rooms for good or bad.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

For most of our lives, doing the hard work of telling us what's going on in the world. Anderson Cooper is with us today.

[Dan Harris]

Yes. Yes. Anderson Cooper, who is the anchor of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, host of the Whole Story with Anderson Cooper and the popular Grief Focus podcast, All There is with Anderson Cooper. And I'm really interested to talk to him about that.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

He is also a regular correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes, which is on in the Robinson household every Sunday, right before we watch the evening football game. And he's a New York Times bestseller. So without further ado, Anderson, come on out.

[Michelle Obama]

Anderson Cooper. How are you, sir? Welcome to imo. Thank you for being here.

[Dan Harris]

Welcome to imo.

[Craig Robinson]

Thank you very much.

[Dan Harris]

Great to see you.

[Craig Robinson]

Thank you. We're kind of dressed the same colors.

[Michelle Obama]

I'm not sure I know you all

[Craig Robinson]

it says about me, given your fashion sense, but it's a little alarming, actually.

[Michelle Obama]

That's good. You guys look cute.

[Dan Harris]

This is very close.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

Yes. But I like your style.

[Craig Robinson]

Nobody has ever said that to me.

[Michelle Obama]

No one has said. No one ever. Well, it's great to have you. I was just saying you've spent some time with my husband over the years.

[Craig Robinson]

I actually saw you. I did an interview with your husband in Ghana, and you were there, I think, with your kids at the Last door.

[Michelle Obama]

Yes.

[Craig Robinson]

That enslaved people would go to before your first term. Yeah. Yeah. It was incredible. It was an incredible experience.

[Michelle Obama]

Powerful experience.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah. Oh, it's nice to be here.

[Michelle Obama]

But you've been busy in the meantime.

[Craig Robinson]

It's. Yeah, you know, it's been. It's been. It's been a little busy.

[Dan Harris]

Well, let's get right down to it. Why would you do a grief podcast?

[Craig Robinson]

You know, it started. My mom died in 2019. She was 95. And I. She was the last person left from my family. My brother had died by suicide when I was 21. He killed himself in front of my mom, and my dad had died when I was 10 of a heart attack. And so grief had. I mean, I'd kind of known loss early on, but. So my mom was the last, and I was kind of. You know, I was prepared for it. She lived an extraordinary life, and we were very close, but I suddenly found myself going through all the things that she had left behind, which is a process all of us will go through at some time in our life, unfortunately, and turned out to be also all my dad's things, all my brother's things, which my mom could never go through. She can never bring herself. So I found it to be such a lonely and overwhelming experience of. I didn't know. I mean, I hadn't heard people talk about it. I obviously knew it as an intellectual concept. This is something that happens. But my mom saved everything. And the way I deal with things is I tend to kind of narrate them from a distance in my head. And I just started recording stuff on my phone. And then I thought, it's weird that there's not more stuff out there about this process that is so universal. And I'd never actually. I mean, I'd only listen to one podcast. I wasn't a big podcast listener. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just started talking to people because I needed help and figuring out, how do you. How do you do this? And it's been an extraordinary evolution since then. Yeah, it's been amazing.

[Dan Harris]

Wow. Wow.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, you've had a pretty interesting childhood. I just recently watched a documentary about your family, mother's history documentary for HBO about my mom. I mean, that was. She was an amazing.

[Craig Robinson]

She was cool. She was cool. Yeah. My mom was Gloria Vanderbilt, and she was kind of, in some ways, larger than life, but she lived this extraordinary life of Very early loss and this kind of crazy childhood she had and never really feeling. She felt like a changeling most of her life. And we. Yeah. So I was very glad though, I was able to put together this documentary for HBO called Nothing Left Unsaid. And for me it was really important that I felt like with my brother and my dad, there was so much left unsaid because I was so young when they died. And when my mom. Actually, when my mom reached the age of 91, she wrote me this really funny text about being 91 and yet feeling like 17. And it just kind of clicked in my head of like, you know, I wanna engage with her in a real conversation for the next year of her life. And, you know. Cause I think so often we know our parents as our parent, we don't necessarily know them as a human being. And it's only after where we kind of realize, wow, there's all this stuff we don't know about them. So I asked my mom if she would have this intentional conversation with me for a year, which she was thrilled about. Cause it meant I would be talking to her a lot. And we did it over email and phone. And we ended up making into a book called the Rainbow Comes and Goes. And then we made this documentary called Nothing Left Unsaid. And it was really important to me that when she died, she knew me and I knew her. And there was nothing left unsaid between us. There was no, you know, there were no secrets. There were no things. Oh, I wish I had said that. We had said it all. And it was really. It was extraordinary.

[Dan Harris]

Wait, what was the thing that you found out about your mom as a human being that surprised you the most?

[Craig Robinson]

I mean, I had known. I mean, as a kid, I was very concerned about stability. And my mom was an amazing person, but she was not very parental. And my dad had died. And I very much wanted to know what was happening. And I used to read my mom's journal. I used to monitor her phone calls when I was a kid. Like, I wanted to know what was coming down the pike. And I started working when I was 12 to earn money because I was very concerned about my mom's on shaky financial footing. And even though the world probably thought she was super rich, but she spent a lot of money and had no sense of money. And I knew this from a little kid. And I remember I was actually walking up the stairs one day and my mom was on the phone, she said, talking to somebody on the phone. She said, well, I'll always be Able to make money. And I stopped. And I was like, this ship is going down if she thinks she's always going to be able to do this.

[Michelle Obama]

And how old were you when you heard that?

[Craig Robinson]

I was, like, 12.

[Michelle Obama]

So you knew?

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, I knew. I knew early on.

[Michelle Obama]

Were you the oldest?

[Craig Robinson]

No, I was the youngest. My brother was two years older. But he wasn't as focused on this as much as I was. I was really determined. And, yeah, I started. I mean, it was ridiculous. I started working as a child model at 12 to, like, to help. I mean, not that they. You know, I was saving the money because I was like, I'm gonna need to. I'm building a life raft here. But she was remarkable. And, you know, I was always very sympathetic to my mom. Cause she really didn't have parents of her own. She was kind of. Her dad died when she was an infant. She was raised in hotels in Europe by her mom who just wanted to party. She was the subject of a vicious custody battle when she was 10 years old. It was called the Trial of the Cent and the Depression. And, you know, I kind of saw a sadness behind my mom's eyes her whole life. And I didn't understand what the sadness was from, but I was sympathetic to her. And so even if she wasn't the most kind of mom. Mom, I viewed her as a. I mean, from the time I was little, I viewed her as like a space alien whose rocket ship had, like, failed and landed here on Earth by accident. And it was my job to, like, help her, like, rent an apartment and learn how to breathe oxygen, basically.

[Dan Harris]

That's a level of worry that most young people.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah, but look who's talking about.

[Dan Harris]

I know.

[Craig Robinson]

I knew.

[Michelle Obama]

I listened to you. And I think about him, really. And he's the oldest. I think you called it catastrophic.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, I was a catastrophist.

[Michelle Obama]

He was a catastrophist at that age. In this same way that you were, you know, really thinking, okay, all the worst possible scenarios. And I think he felt like the one that had to know it.

[Craig Robinson]

All right.

[Michelle Obama]

He was gonna be you.

[Craig Robinson]

That's interesting.

[Michelle Obama]

Like, if things fell apart, if our dad ever could never function, then Craig was the one who was gonna make sure.

[Craig Robinson]

It's interesting because the title of this book my mom and I wrote together, which ended up being basically our correspondence over the course of the year, was the Rainbow Comes and Goes, which is from a Wordsworth poem. And it was a poem my mom liked, and for her it meant, well. The rainbow comes and Goes. It's always gonna come back. And so like bright days are just ahead. They're just around the corner. The phone can ring and your whole life can change. And for me the title was like, yeah, the rainbow comes and it goes and it's. And yeah, the phone can ring and your whole freaking life can change. Like I saw it from a negative lens and she saw it, she like could not. It was such an interesting kind of different way of thinking. Realistic.

[Dan Harris]

You're just trying to be realistic. Just cover all the bases in case

[Craig Robinson]

something happen between realistic and pessimistic.

[Michelle Obama]

I think, I think you two fell on the pessimistic side somewhere in the istic family. But do you think that your mom, did she know that you were kind of the backup child?

[Craig Robinson]

She did, yeah, she did. She knew. You know, I didn't really know my mom so well. My dad was such a present dad and she didn't really know how to be a parent and she loved him being a father and she had never had a father. And so when my dad died, it was sudd. Like, who's this person I'm with? Like, I gotta get to know her. And I had a nanny who was, was my mom and my mom hated her and because of that and, but you know, my mom, my mom knew she could feel how attentive and I mean I, I, I was there. I was always the one. She would sort of call and, and it's funny, she would, she would call and I would have to steal. I would steel myself like, okay, who has she killed now and whose body do I gotta bury?

[Dan Harris]

Oh no.

[Craig Robinson]

And I would like, she'd be like, I'd really like you to come over. And finally I'd go over and one time, nine out of 10 times it was cause she had redecorated something and wanted to show me. One time she, I had started going out with the guy who's now the co parent of my child and we'd moved into a place together and she had seen the place and then she called me, she was like, honey, there's something I love, like you talked about. And she dropped this a couple days in a row. I finally went over, I was like, okay, what is it? And she's like, you know, when you love something, somebody, you sometimes do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. I was like, what are you talking about?

[Michelle Obama]

Mom? She's dead in the basement.

[Craig Robinson]

No. And she was like, I'm talking about the taxidermy. And there was a taxidermy. Like this guy had Some taxidermy. And she was like, you know, it's just too much, the taxidermy. I was like, this is what I've been worried about, what you've dragged me here to confront me about. Anyway, I mean, she wasn't wrong, but.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, with your father being. You know, the way you describe your father, I mean, he sounded like a wonderful man. He was your stability. He was your truth. He was your. You know, he made everything seem right for a child. And this is what we also don't realize. I mean, that's all children want is stability. They don't need money, they need. They need certainty. You know, it's like I got a schedule. I know when I'm going to eat. I know when my dad leaves and comes back that he, you know, he does what he says. I need to go to sleep on time. I need all those things make for security. And your dad provided that to you for 10 years, and then he was gone relatively.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah. Suddenly quick. I mean. Yeah, very quick. And it's interesting, I. Because I used to think growing up, like, 10 years. I mean, I was so young and. But what I came to. One of the things I came to realize among many things, is just, you know, what? Ten years was enough. I mean, I wanted more. I wish I'd had more. But in 10 years, he was able to do. To give me that sense of, this is what security feels like and this is what love feels like. And that's, you know, again, I wish I had more. But it's been extraordinary to suddenly realize, oh, you know what? Like, it was enough.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, that's if it's done right. Cause there are a lot of kids who have 10 years of parenting from somebody, and it's not enough. And it's funny that you mention that, because one of the reasons why I think I talk about death and mortality probably more with my kids. And our mom always said this. I mean, it was funny. As we were talking about briefing and prepping for you coming on, we realized we had different memories of how our parents talked about death. And I was like, mom talked about it all the time. And you felt like she didn't talk about it at all.

[Dan Harris]

She didn't talk about it in the way that she's talking about it. She would always prepare us for her death. Like she's been dropping dead for 20 years, right? Like, well, when I drop dead, you're gonna have to do this, this, and this. And I think she looked at the two of us and tried to give each of us what we needed at the time, because she did not talk to me about death a lot, but she apparently talked to Misha a lot about it.

[Michelle Obama]

Maybe me as a daughter, as a mother, as a mother, I think she wanted me to know throughout my life, she wanted to hand us our lives early. Like, you're responsible. You did this for yourself. My mom would always say, and she would say this publicly. I didn't have anything to do with raising Michelle and Craig. They always knew this. But I think she. Because there's some security in knowing that when you are gone as a parent, that your children are gonna be okay. And I didn't understand that until I had kids. And I realized that's the scariest thing is not just losing them or something happening to them, it's something happening to me. And my kids are gonna go through life not feeling like they have what they need to get through. And I think my mom was constantly telling me, you're fine. You have common sense. You're already making decisions as a child. I think she was trying to tell me what you came to realize, that if you know your parents values and their core, you've seen them, you've experienced them. If there's a loss, you're gonna be okay.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah. My dad wrote a book about two years before he died called Families, and it was a memoir about. He grew up kind of poor in Mississippi on a farm during the Depression. And it was about the life of families then and the family that he was born into and the family that he created with my mom and my brother and me. And it's really a letter to my brother and me that he wrote knowing there was a good chance that he would die. His dad had died at 50. His dad before that had died at 50. I've gone through my whole life thinking I would die at 50. I'm 58 now. And, like, I realized I had this. Just this crazy idea, which a lot of people have, if you lose a parent early on, that you're going to die at the age their parent died. Thankfully, there's advances in medicine, but it's such a blessing to have this book because it's the family history and it's all these names of people and stories that never get told in history books of people who were poor farmers who gathered for family reunions. And their stories don't get written up in the history books very often. But, you know, I know about my great Uncle Raspberry who, you know, cried so much that people thought his bladder was just located too close to his Eyeballs and all these kind of obscure, you know, characters that made up, like, the opera of my dad's childhood on this farm. It's amazing to hear his voice. And actually, I just about maybe two months ago, got an email from somebody from Mississippi Public tv, and I've had no. I got a radio interview my dad did about 10 years ago. That was the first time I heard his voice because I have no recordings of him or anything. I had no moving images of him. And a lady from Mississippi Public Radio, an archivist, found an old TV interview my dad gave promoting this book, and she sent it to me. And for 20 minutes, I watched my dad sit there talking, moving. It was the first time I'd seen him moving. It was just incredible.

[Michelle Obama]

What did it feel like?

[Craig Robinson]

It was interesting. I mean, it brought back. It's so interesting to me, the cycles of history, the repeat in families that we don't even know about. So, like, my son is named Wyatt because my dad was named Wyatt. But I've recently just randomly started calling my son Buddy, which I've never called anybody Buddy in my whole life. I'm not, like, I hate the Buddy. Thanks very much. No, I'm not really. And I been going through these things still, and I found all these letters that my dad's brothers and sisters sent to him. They're all addressed to Buddy. And it turns out that was his name. That's how he was known back then. I mean, he wasn't Wyatt Cooper. He was Buddy Cooper.

[Dan Harris]

And you had never heard anyone call him Buddy?

[Craig Robinson]

I hadn't ever heard anybody call him Buddy. And, I mean, maybe somebody as a kid said this to me, but I had no memory of it. And then watching this TV thing, my dad, like, literally, I had just been. I've got a place in the country, and there's a little stream on it. And I've been really liking my son. And I like to clear all the leaves from the stream and, like, get the stream moving.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah, that's a unique thing. Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

You know, and, you know, it's very satisfying. You're out in nature, and it's fun, and there's snakes jump out and stuff.

[Michelle Obama]

Oh, yeah, that's like a blast.

[Craig Robinson]

But my dad is on this TV show talking, and he suddenly says that. He's like, well, I go with my sons into Central park, and only we know about this little stream, and we spend a lot of time clearing the leaves from the stream. And I was just like. And then the memory came back to me of like, oh, my God, I Remember doing this with my dad, and the fact that I am doing these things with my son without even realizing it, I just find kind of extraordinary.

[Dan Harris]

So do you have any recollections of when your dad was alive?

[Craig Robinson]

I do, yeah. But they're not, you know, they're more like the memory of the softness of his stomach when I would lie on the floor with him watching television and my head was on his stomach, or he was a writer, so I remember the sound of typewriter keys, you know, late at night, things like that. But there's a lot. They're very fragmentary. There's not. And it's been so hard for me to. It's only now that I've sort of started to remember more. Like I ran from. You know, at 10 years old, I was so terrified by his death and just shocked and angry and filled with rage, and I just buried it. I just stuffed it all down. And when my brother died 10 years later, I stuffed that down, too. And I propelled me into the world. And in some ways, it was a very effective strategy for a kid to, you know, to have rocket fuel of rage and anger and heartbreak. But what I've learned in doing this grief podcast and in actually going through the things is I realized. I came to the realization about two years ago that. Or about a year ago that I'd never grieved. And I had this realization when I had stopped doing the podcast. I was like, this is too overwhelming. I can't do this. I listened to a lot of these voicemails, and finally one day I was like, oh, I'll start. Maybe I'll just go back down the basement, start again. After a couple of months, I opened up a box, and I just randomly selected this box, and there was a hundred of them in the basement. And it turned out to be a box of my dad's papers and a bunch of files, moldy and mildewed. I opened the first one up, and there was an essay inside he'd written. I put my glasses on, looked at the title, and it was called the Importance of Grieving. And in it, he wrote about, and he quoted some psychologists, child psychologists, about what happens to kids who don't grieve and how they go through their life or can go through their life with sort of this melancholy they can never quite put their finger on. And I realized, like, oh, my God, that's me. That is what I've done my entire life. And that was, for me, the beginning of, okay, how do I turn to that little child who's still buried deep inside me and who's the framework through which I see everything and how do I, you know, start to grieve? And so that's. That's. Yeah, that's why I keep doing this podcast.

[Dan Harris]

Well, that's the answer to the very first question, right? Yes.

[Craig Robinson]

It's a long answer, but.

[Michelle Obama]

No, but I mean, I'm just picturing 10 year old you.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

I mean, my heart breaks.

[Dan Harris]

So after having done this for a while and then turning it off and back on again, have you learned a strategy that is helpful for people to grieve or is it individualized? Because I gotta tell you, I felt like we GRE when our dad died. My mom was the type where, okay, like Mish was saying, get up, keep going, feel sorry. Today, maybe tomorrow, maybe a third day. But then after that, just get on up, whether you're finished grieving or not. Get up, go to work, go do your thing. Is there a right, wrong? Is there a way to grieve?

[Craig Robinson]

I certainly. In the world, I certainly am no expert. And I ran from it, I buried it. But it doesn't go away. And it has stopped me from being able to. I am wary all the time, which helps in my job at times, especially going to war zones and stuff, which is how I started my career. But it keeps me distant from people. It keeps me. Everything is a threat. Everything is seen through the lens of this 10 year old boy who's still.

[Michelle Obama]

Why would you want to be close to somebody who could. Who could hurt you?

[Craig Robinson]

Well, die or. Yeah, exactly. For me, the voice in my head is this voice that I developed to protect that little kid long ago. And it is telling me all the signals it sends me are, hey, don't trust this person. You gotta be wary about this. I'm not sure, but this. I read rooms like nobody's business. Any room I walk to, I clock everybody. Even if I'm not looking at them, even it seems like I'm unaware and it's exhausting and it's not healthy. And so I've been trying to figure out as an adult is how do you start to let go? Yeah. And also give room or space for grief. And like you can hold it softly. And I wanna. I don't want there to be a sadness behind my eyes like my mom had and that I saw. And. And so I'm highly motivated. And it's an incredible thing that there is, you know, it will still be painful, but that the wound is the root to the gift. It's only by Allowing yourself to feel the sadness, that you actually feel the joy and you feel them again. That my dad is alive inside me. I can feel even the little boy I was. And I talk to them.

[Michelle Obama]

And our current culture is not helpful.

[Craig Robinson]

I think it's strange that society has set up that we no longer talk about grief. I mean, it wasn't always this way. When my dad grew up in this small town in Mississippi, everybody went to funerals every weekend. Like, grief was much more. It was something spoken about. People wore black. Even if you didn't know the person, you went to the funeral, you brought food. And my grandmother played piano at funerals. And my dad would go, and his job was to hold babies at funerals. And there was a. You know, there was more of a commons of the soul. There was more of a community aspect to grief that has been shunted aside as taboos changed. You know, it used to be you couldn't talk about sex, but death and grief you talked about. Now you can talk about sex, but you can't talk about grief. It's a weird shift.

[Michelle Obama]

And, you know, and grief is a ritual. Yeah, we're losing a lot of ritual.

[Craig Robinson]

Absolutely. And rituals are so important, which I have never really thought about. Francis Weller, this writer I mentioned, he does grief rituals. And he did a small ritual of. For it was about 200 people in this room. And there were bowls in each corner with stones in. And you could take a stone and basically whisper the name of a loved one. And then you would put it in this bowl with water with all the other people's stones. And at the end, all the stones were collected. And I kind of was like, I don't know about this. This seems kind of cheesy to me. And in five minutes, I was, like, weeping over my stone. I mean, it was incredible. And I don't. Like, I'm trying not to be a person who displays emotion in public, but, like, they're all. I mean, it was a beautiful. Like, everybody was into this. And so I was like, all right, I'll go pick up a stone. And suddenly I'm like, oh, my God, I need another stone. And like, finally, they were like, anderson, enough with the stones. Like, you gotta move it along, kid. But it was incredible. It was really incredible. And I think there's tremendous power in that ritual and communal aspect of it and respecting aging.

[Michelle Obama]

We don't do it well. We don't celebrate the moving on into that stage, which should be beautiful, of wisdom and knowledge, where retirement is honored. We didn't have nursing homes and senior centers because families reincorporated. You know, you didn't lose the elderly. They stayed with you. They became a part of the fixture. They were, you know, they played a critical role in not only the family unit, but the community unit. I think of just a crazy example. When I was a young attorney and I was a first year, and I worked for a big law firm, they had like 30 floors in a building downtown. One day I got an assignment from a partner to take a memo over to one of the retired partners who still had an office. And I didn't even know this part of the firm existed. It was almost like this shadow system of firms. And they had everything that the regular office had, but it was older. It wasn't remodeled. There were older receptionist. It was a quiet floor, and the offices were still set up. You know, there were corner offices. And I went and I found the person. I gave the thing. But I left there feeling really creepy because I thought, okay, yeah, this is the floor where old partners come to die. It made me think about how. And I continue to think about how we treat and why people don't want to move on. And I think my husband said this recently. I mean, one of the problems with society today is that nobody wants to move on from leadership. People hang on too long, and they hang on beyond their usefulness or even their practicality. I mean, as we get older, we think a different way. You know, leaders are supposed to move on to make room for the next generation that has new ideas, new energy. But because there's no place for our senior leaders to go with honor and dignity, I think people hold on too long. And I think we suffer as a society, as a nation, as a world, because we haven't figured out how to honor our elders, to give them a space to leave gracefully, to really give them a place of honor so that they. They feel ready and anxious to go there. It doesn't feel like the end of the road. It's the beginning of something new. And we don't do that well in America or in the world, quite frankly.

[Craig Robinson]

And I think people are. I think younger people especially are just sort of freaked out by. Scared by the aging process, don't want to deal with it, and so shunted aside. Just as I think with grief oftentimes when, you know, somebody in your office has lost a loved one and they come back after, you know, what, two days of bereavement and relief or whatever ridiculous, tiny amount people are given and people don't know what to Say, and sometimes. And I hear this all the time from listeners, the podcast. You know, people either don't say anything. Cause they think, oh, I don't wanna. Maybe they think, oh, I don't wanna bring this up and upset the person. As if it's not constantly in that person's head all the time. You know, I think about my dad and my brother and everybody I've lost all the time. It's always there. It's not like somebody's gonna upset me by bringing it up. But also, people don't know what to say. And sometimes when people do start to say things, it seems like people are kind of probing to see how bad they should feel. Like, well, how old was the person and were they sick for a long time? And were you close? And kind of a checklist of like, okay, well, you weren't really close and they were old, so it was kind of expected.

[Michelle Obama]

I'll never ask you about this again.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Right?

[Craig Robinson]

I don't have to worry about it. And it makes me feel better now. I was like, okay, not too close. Oh, grandmother. Okay, fine, fine.

[Dan Harris]

I have a question, because I think you. You've talked to so many people through your show or connected with so many people. What would be the first thing you would say to somebody who had lost someone when you ran and walked into work? Because. And it's okay if you don't have an answer.

[Craig Robinson]

No. Yeah, I have people all day long now. The nice thing about doing this podcast is I have people. I mean, I flew from New York to LA this morning. I had two people in the airport stop me and tell me about somebody they had lost. And it is.

[Michelle Obama]

I.

[Craig Robinson]

It's beautiful. It's the most real conversation you can possibly have. And the fact that they took a moment to tell me about their loved one and, you know, I asked them the name of the person. And, you know, sometimes it really depends on the situation. I mean, look, sometimes someone doesn't really want to talk about it, and they just want to let you know that they. They have had this loss. So a lot of it, I think, is kind of just getting a sense from the other person. But, you know, sometimes I generally won't ask, well, what did they die of? How old were they? Or tell me what happened. I'll usually ask, like, how did you. How did you meet? How'd you meet your husband? And immediately someone smiles and has this story of like the first time they met or something that. That brings up that lets the other person know you're interested and you care and yet also that maybe allows them to touch for a moment that person and feel that person for a second. I think that's the most powerful. Again, I think it largely depends.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah. I feel like such a schmuck. Sorry, Mish. I feel like such a schmuck because of the way I deal with grief I put on the person who's grieving. Right. So I'm very grateful, very perfunctory.

[Craig Robinson]

How so?

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah, what do you.

[Dan Harris]

This is exactly how so.

[Craig Robinson]

Okay.

[Dan Harris]

Sorry for your loss. You know, that's like the go to when you wanna say something, but you don't want any more facts. And that's me. And just hearing you say asking. Just asking more questions, I'm, like, fearful of doing that.

[Craig Robinson]

Fearful that it's gonna upset them, because

[Dan Harris]

it's gonna be upset Tsunami upsetting you.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

That's why I feel like a schmuck. Cause I'm thinking about myself this whole time. When I see your reaction to how moving this is for you, I'm like, dang.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, the question is, have you grieved?

[Dan Harris]

In my opinion, I've grieved the way I thought I would grieve, which is okay. I had my three days and then off back to work. Right. There are times, and Kelly knows this, where something will remind me of my mom.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah. And you can't talk. Yeah. And that's.

[Dan Harris]

And that's probably why I don't say stuff to people. Because before, it would be something remind me of my father. And then when it got far enough away, I was like, all right, I'm better now.

[Craig Robinson]

But I mean, I gotta tell you, for. You know, for somebody who's grieving, to have that interaction with you and to see the tears in your eyes as I'm seeing right now, that would be an extraordinary moment to share with someone. You may never see him again.

[Dan Harris]

Never see him again.

[Craig Robinson]

You probably won't. But you've had a genuine connection with another human being about the most important, fundamental thing which you both share, even though you don't even know that person's name. But did you. When. When my mom died, I was ready for. For her death. What I wasn't ready for was the realization that I'm the last one left. And that hit me. I mean, I was. My mom had like, you're. My mom had been talking about dying her entire life. And usually in the vein of like, well, I'll never be a burden, and you can always find 52nd all. I was like, can't. Can you? I don't like, why are you saying that to a 14 year old? That's kind of freaking, do I need to call authorities or something? But after a while I tuned it out because it was just people say stuff. You have no idea when the end of your life comes. My mom was holding on for as long as she could, but that feeling of, oh, wow, I'm the last one left who knows all. Just the little tiny memories that seem important when I was a child or the little sounds in my house and all of that just kind of. And I'm so. I think that's why going through the stuff has been so hard for me. Because everything is infused with memory and meaning. Even if it's, you know, a hundred Christmas cards that my mom received in 1973. Like, I go through each one. Cause some of them are for some pretty interesting people. I was like, oh, I didn't know Charlie Chaplin sent Christmas cards. But some of them are just, you know, some random person. And you know, those I'll throw out. But it's. It's very hard to kind of. I find it very hard to kind of let go of these things that. Cause I feel like it's letting go a piece of them, basically.

[Michelle Obama]

I think I'm just the opposite.

[Craig Robinson]

Really?

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

And it may be protective, right?

[Craig Robinson]

You have. No, you have.

[Michelle Obama]

I am not. I'm notoriously not a saver.

[Craig Robinson]

Okay.

[Michelle Obama]

I mean, and even with mom, right? Our mom, you know, she lived with us in the white house, but she kept our childhood home. And when she left the white house, we didn't want her to go back to a home because we just thought for security reasons, right? So we got her a condo downtown Chicago with doormen and everything. But the house was still there. It was sort of like an albatross for her, right. Cause you still had to check the furnace and, you know, mow the lawn and all of that sort of stuff. But I used to push her to go through the basement and get rid of stuff, right? Because she had my law library books. I was like, mom, they don't even have, you know, law books don't last. The law changes. They are obsolete. Don't save them. And so she finally did. Maybe Kelly and I. Kelly. I'm sure Kelly did. My sister in law did.

[Dan Harris]

We finally. She was like, okay, I'll get rid of this stuff.

[Michelle Obama]

So I didn't feel.

[Craig Robinson]

You didn't feel attachment to that?

[Michelle Obama]

Because I just felt like that's. That's a bur. That's a lot. And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be in a position where my mother would be gone and then I would be left sorting through all of that stuff. Now, Kelly did that for me and maybe my sister in law will have a harder time. It was just as hard for her. And thank God she did it, but I don't think I would have. And I didn't want to have that work left to do.

[Craig Robinson]

Do you think if you had gone through that thing that it would have been emotional for you or it would've.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah. Yeah. And it might have helped with the grieving process.

[Craig Robinson]

So was not wanting to go through it, not wanting that emotion or just this is incredibly inconvenient. And like, this is. Who wants to spend, however, 100 hours?

[Michelle Obama]

I think it was probably a little bit of a boast.

[Dan Harris]

And really, you have to remember, my mom was still alive. So when we were going through stuff, she was like, throw that away. Throw that away. Don't throw that away. You should keep this. And we finally got it down to her.

[Craig Robinson]

I mean, that's a nice way to do it.

[Dan Harris]

It was a nice way to do

[Craig Robinson]

it because she tells you the stories.

[Dan Harris]

Yes, yes. It was a better way to do it. But then when she died, she still had a bunch of stuff when we just, like took it all to our house. And then what we're trying to do is not have it so that when we, our kids take it to their house. Right. But I will say that you got across to mom because she was at a point when she was still alive, still living on Euclid, where she was like, come on over. Euclid is the place we grew up in. Come on over. Let's get rid of this stuff. And I think we got rid of just about everything. And that's why we probably can't find your spiral notebooks.

[Craig Robinson]

My mom had a storage unit in Queens that she had never been to.

[Dan Harris]

Oh, my God.

[Craig Robinson]

And she would just send stuff to the storage unit.

[Dan Harris]

See, we didn't have that.

[Michelle Obama]

I didn't believe it. I don't. It's like when the storage unit sent

[Craig Robinson]

your dog to the farm. Yeah. My mom would send some storage unit, and like sometimes like 20 years later, she'd be like, you know what? There's this chair I remember. And she had a lady named Nora who'd worked with my mom for 60 years as her housekeeper. Nora would schlep to the storage unit.

[Michelle Obama]

Oh, man.

[Craig Robinson]

Find this chair. Bring it back. And my mom would embrace it like it was a long lost child. For a week and then be like, it doesn't work anymore. And the chair would go back. So, like, it was just. It's like the last scene in Citizen Kane where there's this warehouse and like they're just going through it, throwing things in the fire.

[Michelle Obama]

I mean, I think you said this earlier. It's like there's not one way to grieve, right? And I can imagine for your mother, whose childhood was so precarious, like, she didn't have one, she didn't have a parent, you know, and the parent that she had through the custody battle, they took her from the woman that. I mean, I hear her story, it's

[Craig Robinson]

a crazy Christian story.

[Michelle Obama]

And I grieve for her.

[Craig Robinson]

And going through my brother's. I mean, my brother killed himself in front of her. Going through his things were just. It was impossible for her.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah, absolutely. So I can understand her. Like, that chair, like that's a memory. That's like the thing that she didn't. She didn't have lessons, right?

[Craig Robinson]

It was funny actually, once, like, I don't know, the last couple years of her life, she called me up one day, breathless. She was like, I found this screen on first dibs that was made out of some Chinese wallpaper that was once in a dining room my mom had in a house we had when I was a kid. She found it where on first dibs? Somebody, I guess when she sold the house, somebody took this Chinese wallpaper down, sold it to some store, and they made screens out of it. So my mom just randomly found these screens and she was like, oh, my God, that's the wallpaper. So my mom was like, you have to get it. I was like, I have to get it.

[Dan Harris]

Okay.

[Craig Robinson]

And they turned out to be like, crazy expensive screens. I didn't know screens were. So I was like, who do you.

[Michelle Obama]

It's like a screen. What are we screening?

[Craig Robinson]

Who's screens? Like, what are we doing? We're not. Anyway, she was like, you really gotta get. It means so much to me. So I was like, okay, fine, I got it. And I mean, we're talking like it was like $50,000. I mean, this was like, I did extra. Like, I took on a couple of speaking gigs to get these screens. Friggin screens. And she embraces them like this was gonna solve her life, her problems in her life. She brings them, gets them in her room. A week later she calls me up, she's like, I've had to redecorate the dining room around the screenshot, which means I'm Redecorating the dining room, around the screens. And then two weeks, four weeks go by and she's like, do you have any room for these screens? They're just, you know, I thought it was the answer, but it just doesn't work. Yeah. So.

[Michelle Obama]

And I've come to believe that things aren't the thing.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, they're not. Right. As my mom would acknowledge, like the things that she would redecorate constantly. But it never quite got it to what the issue really was. And it cost a lot, lot of money along the way.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah. So I'm, you know, I'm trying to practice. I try to practice that as maybe part of my grieving process, that it's not stuff, you know, I don't want it as a memory of me. I don't want my kids to feel that, you know, keeping this thing that I just got forever and lugging it around with them for the rest of their life is a way to stay connected to me or to stay connected to my mother or my father. It's. For me, stories matter. It goes back to story. I'd rather sit and talk about all the times, remember the time and do we remember and relay the pass those stories on to our kids as a better way of honoring our elders, our ancestors, than with a storage room full of their stuff? Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah. I don't recommend that.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

So Anderson and I know, which by

[Craig Robinson]

the way, for one of the reasons I'm so motivated to go all through this stuff. Cause I don't want to leave from my kids. That's like this room full of stuff. They're like, who are these people?

[Michelle Obama]

It's like. And it's these screens. What am I supposed to do with screens?

[Dan Harris]

Exactly. That was just what I wanted to talk about. How does this work? Now that you know and you've gone through this? How does this inform your parenting and how are you preparing yourself to sort of convey the right message to your world?

[Craig Robinson]

Well, to me, I mean, like telling the story of my, my, of my parents and their parents to my kids is really important. Like, I want my kids to, to know that I, like, I didn't pay any attention to my mom's family, her history, her family history. Growing up like the Vanderbilts, I consciously wanted nothing to do with them. I, at my, in my 12 year old, you know, lizard brain, looked at like the poor Coopers farmers as the family. You wanted the messed up Vanderbilts. And I was like, I'm going with these. I'm glad I don't have this it's

[Michelle Obama]

like I want to connect with Uncle Raspberry.

[Craig Robinson]

Exactly. Like, so I'm. That I'm a Cooper. I'm not a Vanderbilt. And it wasn't like there was a pot of gold waiting for me in, like, the Vanderbilt archives. They spent all that money very quickly, the Vanderbilts did, from what I. But once I had kids of my own, suddenly I was like, I know nothing about the Vanderbilts. I can tell you about the Coopers. And so I actually ended up writing a book about them, mainly because I wanted to study them and understand who they were so I could figure out what to tell, like, explain to my kids, like, this weird lineage they have. Like, my dad. The only connection to the Vanderbilts I had as a kid. My dad once took me to Grand Central Station, which was founded by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who is not a nice guy. And there's a statue of him outside Grand Central Station, which, by the way, he paid for and had made and set up there. It wasn't like his workers loved him. And he did it. It was his. And he made photographs. He had paintings painted of himself and gave them out to all his children. Not that they wanted them either. But I remember my dad taking me to see this statue when I was, like, six. And the only thing I took away from it was that grandparents turned into statues when they die, which is very relatable. I know everybody feels this.

[Dan Harris]

Oh, yeah, we all. Yes.

[Craig Robinson]

Has not made that mistake. But I know Andy Cohen makes fun of me anytime I tell a childhood story. He's like, oh, the venerable boy. But I wanted to, like, have a narrative to tell my kids about, like, this weird family that they came from who achieved remarkable things. But also, you know, this guy who wasn't nice to any of the women in the family, and he sent his wife to a mental hospital because he wanted to have an affair with the babysitter. And, you know, so it's. It's. I do think, you know, for me, learning the history has been fascinating, but it's not something I ever paid any attention to. I just thought, no good can come of believing you're part of this thing that doesn't exist.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, I mean, I'm picturing.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Michelle Obama]

I'm picturing the statue. You in front of the statue, thinking that's where grandparents go.

[Dan Harris]

Yes.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

Of course. Then, like, a month later, I went to the Museum of Natural History with my. You know, I don't know. It was my first grade class. Ms. Crits was the teacher, but we went to the Museum of Natural History in my class. And we're outside, and there's now that, you know now, infamous statue of Teddy Roosevelt on a horse with. With two indigenous people. And the teacher was like, does anyone know who this is? And I raised my hand. I was like, I think it's my grandfather. Again, relatable.

[Michelle Obama]

It's just like.

[Craig Robinson]

And then they beat me up and.

[Michelle Obama]

But I. The thing that I like. I mean, I know we've got a listener question, and we'll get to this, but when I saw the documentary of you and your mother having those conversations, that's the thing that I would encourage people to do now. It's like, collect those stories, have those conversations now. I mean, grief is. We have work to do to understand it. But there is just so much power in getting to know your own story.

[Craig Robinson]

And those stories are not being passed on.

[Michelle Obama]

They are not.

[Craig Robinson]

And, you know, with each generation, the details fade away, fade away.

[Michelle Obama]

It gets a little murkier. And you don't know who was that? And, you know, in our family, it's like, well, were they really a part of our family? Is that a real cousin, or was that a play cousin? It's a. You know, you want to know all that stuff and that. That's work. That's better than having a storage locker

[Craig Robinson]

full of stuff, because it does. I will tell you, once I read about the Vanderbilts and wrote a book about them, it made me feel more connected to America. In a way, it made me feel more connected to New York City, like this city that they were in hundreds of years ago. And I became fascinated with the hidden history of New York and the. There's the Starbucks near my house. That was the site of the Astor riots when there were competing groups in New York riding over two competing opera houses in lower Manhattan, which makes no sense.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, now that's on. What's the show? Gilded.

[Craig Robinson]

Is that on? The Gilded Age. That's the Gilded Age. Well, I know.

[Michelle Obama]

Oh, my God. That's you. That's your family.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that is literally my family.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we saw the plot lines.

[Craig Robinson]

Was the opera riots. Okay. Well, yeah, there you go.

[Michelle Obama]

Got to watch the Gilded Age.

[Dan Harris]

Talk about it.

[Craig Robinson]

I don't need like. Yeah, I've never seen it. I've never.

[Dan Harris]

I don't blame.

[Craig Robinson]

I've never seen Hits too close to home. Right, right. Their portrayal of

[Michelle Obama]

the country. Homie Is never that small.

[Dan Harris]

Hey, we catastrophist can only take so much.

[Craig Robinson]

Exactly.

[Dan Harris]

But.

[Craig Robinson]

But it did make me. And knowing my Dad's history. And. And I did the Skip Gates find you'd root show, which was incredible. But it makes you feel more connected to the world and to where you are and to your community. And it just makes you feel grounded in a way that I think so many of us don't grow up feeling grounded to our surroundings. We're kind of floating through.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

Well, we have a listener question.

[Craig Robinson]

All right.

[Dan Harris]

We always try and pay it forward here at imo. And this question is from Nancy in Salt Lake City.

[Nancy (Listener)]

Hi, Craig and Michelle, this is Nancy. I would love to hear you both talk a little about dealing with the loss of your mom, which I'm sure is going to be a hard question. I recently lost my dad in 2022, my mom in 2023, which obviously still makes me emotional. That was a hard 13 months and obviously the time since has been hard too. As an only child, it really has been very difficult to process because I don't have anybody to process with a lot of the time. I'd love to hear how you guys have processed the grief, helped each other and moved on after losing your dad when you were younger and your mom more recently. Thank you.

[Dan Harris]

That's one of the few questions that is aimed right square at our forehead. So you want to go first?

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah. You know, I think I'm still processing. You know, I don't think that there's a. You process it and. And that's that. And I'm learning that there's no need to have processed it. I mean, I don't want to process my parents lives and feel like I can pack it up and that's that. Now that you know, their memory, they are in my head every day. Every. The way I lead my life, how I show up in the world, the words that come out of my mouth, the impact that I'm trying to have, it's all. It's all because of that memory. And the loss is a part of it. So I don't wanna. I'm still working that through.

[Craig Robinson]

Are the memories tinged with sadness because of the loss or is there distance that you can look at it without the.

[Michelle Obama]

It depends on the time of day. Right? I mean, there are plenty time. Plenty of times when we sit and laugh. Our family is laughter. You know, that's one of the ways we deal with grief. We sit and tell stories and we laugh about it. And then there are times just like Craig, that feeling of just the mention of their name, it can't come out. And it's not sadness. It's just like it's grief, you know,

[Dan Harris]

it's missing more than anything.

[Michelle Obama]

And that hasn't gone away. It doesn't go away. Our dad died.

[Dan Harris]

It's been 34 years ago.

[Michelle Obama]

34 years ago. And look, I'm speaking all the time and I get interviewed all the time. And there's always the what would your dad think of. You know, I don't care how many times I get that question. Just answering chokes me up because of joy. But it's also longing of what he missed and didn't get a chance to see. And you know, that's all. I don't think that's ever gonna go away. But I don't know that it needs to. I just think it's a part of me now. Like life, his life is a part of me. His death is a part of me. Yeah, yeah. I feel them in different ways. I mean, time, what I would say time matters, right? I mean, in terms of the day to day pain, loss, grief. That's one of those things where I believe time heals all wounds. It just, you know, after a while the cut becomes, you know, skin healed and then it's scab and then it's scarce, but the scar is always there. And the loss of my parents are scars on me and they will be there forever. But that's a part of life. There can be no other way. So I think part hearing you say that, you just have to develop a relationship with grief. It's. It's. The goal isn't to grieve and have it gone. It's just like this is now a part of my life. I had the blessing of having these two amazing people whose loss I feel and I couldn't have that without, you know, the loss is a part of having them. So if I had to do it all again, I choose to have them and go through the loss. But do I ever just feel like, whew, that's done? No, no. Some days I do, some days I don't.

[Dan Harris]

You know, I would say to Nancy in this discussion, my parents, but my mom particularly, cause my dad died first, she did a really good job of. Well, first of all, my parents did a really good job of loving us unconditionally. Right. And letting us know they loved us. There's nothing better than that, especially when you lose one early. Because my mom did a really good job. And you'll remember this. And some people have heard me tell this story. My mom said to us, or she said to me, I don't know if she said it to us when we were fighting when my dad passed away. Of course, we had one fight that was like our. Yes, we had one fight, but it was like the only fight we had in our lives was when my dad died.

[Michelle Obama]

And that was grief.

[Dan Harris]

And that was grief at the time. But you'll love this. My mom said to us, you know, your dad loved you, and you knew how much he loved you, and he knew how much you loved him. So you don't have to be upset about not knowing you guys loved each other. Cause he knew. He told me all the time. And that eased my pain. I don't know about you, but it eased my pain. And it made me sadder at the same time. And as my mom was getting older, we would talk about that. And that was her way of saying that she loved us. And don't worry. When I die, I know you love me. That's a gift that parents can give their kids when they're alive to help the grieving process. I mean, it was. And when I get choked up, it's only because I miss her. I don't think I missed out on anything and would love to have her back, but.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

But

[Dan Harris]

to Misha's point, you know, maybe I am. Maybe you just grieve until the end of time. I don't know. Because I felt like I had got over my father's death. I had gotten over my father's death until my mom died. And then I regreaved for him while I was grieving for my mom.

[Michelle Obama]

But even the thought of I got over my father's death. Death. Why? Why? Why would that be? Why is that a mission?

[Dan Harris]

Well, it's only semantics.

[Michelle Obama]

It's more a rhetorical question. It's not even a question, but it's

[Dan Harris]

only semantics in my case.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah. But I think that that's what people are trying to get to. They're like, when do I get over this? How do I get over this?

[Dan Harris]

And we're learning. We have learned today that maybe you never get over it. And maybe you don't need to get over it. Maybe it's a relationship, like you said, it's a relationship now for the rest of your life.

[Craig Robinson]

Well, I think that word process is. I'm not big on jargon, and I think that word process is very overused, because to me, it's like a word everybody uses. I don't really know what it means to process grief like a cured meat or something. I'm not exactly sure what it is. I mean, I understand the therapeutic Nature of it and feeling things, and there are steps and all that. But I think a lot of people I hear from will say, okay, there's steps you go through and you process it. And then suddenly you find yourself back at step one because you hear a song and it takes you right back to your kid again. I ran from this stuff for so long. I know what it is not to process and to try to push it down, and it doesn't go away. And I know I feel better. It's harder feeling, but I like feeling. And it makes me more able to feel your sadness and to feel your sadness. And I think that's a bond. You know, I've received the benefit of feeling my dad again, and that's an incredible thing. I would always hear people talk about, oh, you'll. You know, I feel them in my heart or. And to me, it always felt like a Hallmark card. But to suddenly, like, feel my dad inside is beautiful. I don't feel it as much with my brother because I think there's. We both went to our individual corners when my dad died. We never talked about it. And I think his death was so violent and sudden and shocking to me that I feel like. I sometimes feel like I don't even know who he was. And that's a terrible feeling. And I'm hoping that will change. But it's, you know, to feel. Yeah. To feel these people alive inside me is incredible. And it's such a blessing. And you can only get that if you process or whatever word you want to use.

[Michelle Obama]

I want us all to just kind of hold space for it to say, yeah, this is going to have an impact on me. Or it has had an impact on me. And maybe by doing that, we can think about when something triggers us when we're having a bad day. Don't brush off. I wonder what's going on. You know, how about immediately going to, what am I grieving? You know, and maybe be easier on yourself first about it or get help or reach out or talk about it. So I would say to our listener, to Nancy, like, talk. Don't sit alone in it. Reach out. Have conversations. Find somebody to unburden yourself with the feelings and that. You gotta do that. Don't sit alone. If she's thinking about it, then I'd say, don't spend a whole lot of time just thinking about it. Do it. Find a place. Find a person.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah. I mean, the power of grief. Support groups. Sometimes it's hard to find in communities, but they're often available. And that could be an extraordinary thing to be in a place where, where you don't have to explain yourself to people who are in that room because they just know inherently. I was talking to a woman, Mary, whose son died of glioblastoma. And I talked to her every couple weeks. We just talk on the phone late at night. And I never met her, but that's one of the things. She just started going to a support group and she says, I finally feel I can relax there because I don't need to kind of explain or am I going crazy? I can just, just be.

[Michelle Obama]

And I would say, Nancy, whatever you're feeling, remember that probably everybody around you that you interact is trying to figure this out.

[Craig Robinson]

That's for sure.

[Michelle Obama]

And maybe it feels less lonely if we all see us as people in this process together and it all hurts. And whether you had a great relationship with the person or whatever their age or how it happened, it's a thing that happens. And if we could just be more gentle with other people in the way we would want to be gentle to our 10 year old selves, that just that process of offering gentleness is helpful. I mean, I see that in you. The process of taking in other people's leaving space for other people's empathy. This whole program, this project of yours is healing you.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, without a doubt.

[Michelle Obama]

And you would think, my God, that's a lot like we started out. Why did you, why are you doing this? But we're ending this conversation undering like what a gift you have that you have this healing experience happening which ends up being you holding space for other people. That's a lesson. That's the power of kindness and empathy. And we need to be thinking about that in these times. And all you can do is once you leave somebody is to live a life worthy of theirs. That's how I think about it. My grieving is my life. It's like I'm honoring Marian and Frasier by showing up every day in a way that would honor them. And I think that's. No, it's better than tearing shit up.

[Craig Robinson]

They would be very proud of you.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

Thanks man.

[Michelle Obama]

Anderson, thank you, man.

[Craig Robinson]

This is, it was a pleasure. It was really lovely.

[Dan Harris]

Really me meet.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

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