← A Place of Yes | A Grief Podcast 
A Place of Yes | A Grief Podcast
The Full Catastrophe: Losing a Son and Learning How to Live Again
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- [00:04]
Heather Straughter
Welcome to A Place of Yes, a podcast about how I moved through my darkest hour, and for me, that was in channeling my grief into good. Welcome to the show. This special episode was recorded live at Northshire Books on June 26. It features a heartfelt conversation with Casey Mulligan Walsh about her memoir, the Full Catastrophe. In front of a live audience, Casey and I talk about grief, resilience and what it's like to rebuild after loss. We share stories, reflections, and some real moments about navigating change, finding where we belong, and how storytelling can help us heal. Since it's in front of a live audience, the audio quality is a little bit different than usual. I hope you enjoy this episode.
- [00:59]
Event Host
I am so happy to get to welcome Casey Mulligan Walsh to the store this evening to talk about her memoir, the Full Catastrophe. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times and HuffPost. Her essay, still published in Split Lip, was nominated for Best of the Net. And she's a founding editor of In A Flash literary magazine. She also serves as an ambassador and on the board of the Family Heart foundation, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the genetic lipid disorder that has affected her family across generations. She will be interviewed this evening by Heather Straughter, the host of the podcast A Place of Yes. Heather founded the nonprofit organization Jake's Help from heaven in 2011 to create opportunities for individuals with complex medical needs and disabilities to thrive. You can learn more about her work@jakeshelpfromheaven.org Please join me in welcoming them both to North Chair.
- [01:49]
Heather Straughter
Well, first of all, thank you all for being here today. For those of you who know me, anytime there's an event like this, I'm always convinced Z0 people will show up. So the fact that there are people here, I'm grateful to all of you. This is really exciting for a place of yes, because Christine, who's in the back, is the producer of the show and the owner of Bright Sided. And we have had these conversations about how fun it would be to have a live recording. It was always just kind of like a pipe dream, like how would we do this? Where would we do it? And then when Casey and I got connected through people who listened to the show and through other guests of the show, we thought it would be kind of cool. Cause she has so many local connections. Wouldn't it be great if we did something at Northstire? And thank you to Rachel and her team and everybody. Here we are. So thank you guys for showing up. And thank you, Casey for making this work. So, Casey, will you share a little bit about the book?
- [02:41]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Yes. I suppose I should have tested the mic before I had to talk. Yes. I'm so thrilled to see all of you here. It's just delightful. And I know it's, you know, there's plenty of other things you could be doing. Northshire is such a beautiful space. And so I'm really grateful to Rachel. Also, my book, the Full Catastrophe, great big picture of it over there on the left is. It's my story of the search for belonging after repeated loss, navigating uncertainty, which we all have to do in life, and learning to live with grief beside joy. I was orphaned at 12, and I lost my only sibling at 20. And that set me off on basically, a search for home that rose above every other goal I had in life. And so I married young, and I did create that family I dreamed of. I had three children. But when my marriage began to crumble, I embraced a new spirituality, kind of a new way to see the world. That became a lifeline during a very hostile divorce. But then the unthinkable happened. My oldest son died at 20 in Cambridge, New York, in a car accident. And, of course, that loss was devastating. But the spiritual strength I cultivated during those two or years or so leading up to his death became something that really helped me navigate my grief and helped me find, finally, a deeper sense of belonging. And I'd say that through it all, what I learned is that life rarely goes as planned, which most of you know by now, but that even in the most heartbreaking circumstances, there's room for unexpected hope and peace and even joy. And it's really about embracing the full catastrophe of life, the highs and the lows, the struggles and the joys that helps us understand, you know, that this messy life is the life that we have and the life that we want. Thank you, Casey.
- [04:49]
Heather Straughter
So I wanted to start this by reading an excerpt from the book. Some of you will really relate to it. It is a part that stuck with me, and it made me want to keep reading. And it actually. It made me laugh out loud a little bit because I have been in a similar situation to this. I know Brian has been in a similar situation to this. It's that weird mix of things that happen when you've lost someone really important. So I'm just going to start by reading this. I'm listening to Sondheim and wading through a sea of bills when the phone rings. Eric Simonson, please. Sorry, he's not here. We're calling about a $60 check he wrote to Price Chopper on October 7, 1998. It was returned for insufficient funds. Seriously? That was nine months ago. With fees. He now owes $82. If he doesn't pay right now, it goes to our lawyer. I drop into my worn out computer chair and stare out the bank of windows in the backyard. Hello? How can we get in touch with him? Glancing at the sympathy cards and still unopened boxes of thank you notes stacked on the side table, I mumble, he's dead. Dead? I detect a note of skepticism. Yeah, dead. He died on June 12. I have to remind myself that Eric isn't away at college or basic training, that he won't burst through the door at any moment. Calling what's for dinner? Mom? We're sorry for your loss. The voice in the phone jars me back to the present. Just send us a copy of the death certificate. No. It falls out of my mouth before I can even have time to think. No, ma'. Am. We'll need a copy of the death certificate. My words come out in a rush. Sorry, I'm not sending you one. It's public record. What are you going to do? Have him arrested? Week after week, well into the fall? I answer the phone to hear a new caller with the same familiar request. We're looking for Eric Simonson. You're going to have a hard time reaching him. Would you like us to stop calling? You bet. Then send us a death certificate. Sorry. Nope. Talk to you soon. I can't pin down the complicated feelings those calls evoke. As annoying as they are, these requests remind me, Eric's still my son. I'm still his mother. And that last piece was what I really related to. Because I think grief does this really weird thing when you have to exist in this world where you have to kind of be normal, but people are putting you in these positions of trying to balance it. It's hard to exist when we lose people who are so important to us. So, Casey, I wanna start like, when you think back on that time and what stands out to you now? Cause I kind of feel like I've had those moments. So what stands out to you?
- [07:20]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
So part of this comes from the prologue of the book, and part of what's interspersed with this scene is the idea that I had spent. It's really kind of the theme of the whole book, that I, since losing my parents really young, had spent most of my life just trying to fit in, trying to kind of tw to myself, prove myself, prove that I belonged. And then leading up to my son's death, we'd had about two years of a lot of trauma in our family. A very stressful, very hostile divorce. And anybody who's been through anything like that knows I spent so much time proving everything. Every bill, every communication with the school, that I was the parent that had, you know, cared for their medical needs, all of those things. And so when this call came, it was all of the feelings, right? I was still deep in grief. It was only six weeks or so after Eric had died. Because of what I'd been through leading up to his death, I had more peace than you might imagine. It was in a kind of a sort of Zen place, which is, I know, maybe hard to understand, but when you read the lead up, I think, you know, you understand it. But then when this call came in, it suddenly hit me that I didn't have to prove anything to anyone, and there was finally nothing left to prove. And it was actually a little freeing and almost exhilarating to just say. To be able to say no. I hadn't been able to say no in so, so long.
- [08:53]
Heather Straughter
I love it. Like I said, it hooked me. I related to it. One of the things we talk about a lot on the show and that I think is so important is talking about our people. So can you share with us a little bit about Eric, like, who he was, how he lived, what you missed the most?
- [09:09]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Yes, yes, of course. I'm happy to. Well, anybody who's had, you know, raised a child from birth to 20 knows there are a lot of different people at a lot of different times. His basic personality from the time he was old enough to walk and run was that he was very gregarious, sort of charismatic. He was that baby in the restaurant that was charming the people at the next table, and they'd end up holding him. And he was. He definitely had adhd, but was the sensory seeking type. So he liked Risk and Danger. And one of the working titles for the book, although I really always kind of knew it should be the Full Catastrophe, was Big Air, because he was a snowboarder and a water skier and a soccer player. And the more dangerous and the more risky, the better for him. And so he was an interesting mix of that. Outgoing on the outside, but truly very sensitive on the inside. And I think sometimes people who are like that, they suffer more in a way because they want to hide that sensitive nature. He was that kid in high school who had literally, like, 15 phone calls a night from girls who all thought that they were his best friend. Not Girlfriends. But, you know, they all called eric. He was 20 when he died. And so, like, I think a lot of. I think we all know kids like this who make that transition from kind of star high school soccer player to young adult life as smoothly as we'd like them to. And then for him, there were a lot of stressors happening all at one time that contributed to the fact that he was a very different kid at 19 and 20 than he had been earlier. And I believe that, you know, who knows? But, you know, he got caught at a difficult time. And most of our kids go through something and they get to grow up and they get to, you know, go back beat men fences and develop a fully rounded adult personality. And so, you know, he got caught at a difficult time and wasn't able to do that.
- [11:14]
Heather Straughter
It's the hardest part, I think, about losing someone. Right. Or just about death in general.
- [11:18]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
It's.
- [11:19]
Heather Straughter
It just happens and there's no going back.
- [11:20]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Right.
- [11:21]
Heather Straughter
So you've experienced so many layers of loss. It's. It's not. It's Eric, but it's your parents and it's your brother. I mean, it's a stupid question, but how has that impacted your life? Right. Like, it's had it impacted huge.
- [11:32]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Wow. Well, you know, there has been a lot of loss. You process loss very differently at 11 and 12 and even 20, when you're just almost an adult kind of than later. Although, when Eric died, one of the things that I did say was I have way too much practice at this, right. Like, it was part of my DNA that people died. When my brother died at 20, when I was 20, he was 27. He had a heart attack. I kind of skipped over denial and bargaining. Like, it's the first time I realized that it was just so integral a part of me that I wasn't like, oh, of course he dies. Everybody in my family dies. It was just more like, yeah, people die, you know, so that by the time Eric died, I had a really deep sense of knowing that meant that I was going to carry this for the rest of my life. And you don't go back. But in the writing, I think balancing the light and the dark isn't necessarily easier, but it's concrete. You see it in print, and it's really important. Nobody wants to read Misery memoir, as I often say. And so I did have to go back in there and really insert some more cheerful scenes because the trauma that happened in our family was more recent than the times that we're happy. It was easier to access that difficult part at first than it was to go all the way back. But I started writing about what I couldn't remember. And in writing about what I couldn't remember, I remembered it. So that worked out in life, I think it's just that from the time I was little, there was upheaval. My parents were both sick. We moved a lot, and then they died. And I just, I think, internalize that. You just do what's in front of you that day. And I didn't even know the word resilience till I was like, in my 40s. I'd never heard of it. I didn't know it was a thing. Even consider that maybe I could go off the rails and. Right. You know, because I was, you know, like, somebody would have to clean up that mess. And so I was too worried about that. But I do think also that kind of spiritual shift that I discuss in the book makes it a little. It's not easy. It's never easy for any of us, but it makes me. It takes less time in. In trauma and upheaval now or when I'm grieving to get back. Back to a place where I can stay present and be grateful for now. And I feel very strongly that my son is still with me. And he gives me signs all the time. So it's a path and a process.
- [14:08]
Heather Straughter
So I love that. And for anyone who listens to the show knows I talk about this all the time. I love the signs, right. Like, yes, I'm all about them. What are some. Like, how do you know Eric is with you?
- [14:17]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Yeah, so it's funny, you know, he's not a rainbow or a butterfly or a cardinal or a dragonfly to me. Back to like an irreverent teen in the 90s, right? It's 90s music all the time. Significant music at significant times that I just laugh, you know, like, okay, I knew you'd be here. And then 11, 11 on the clock. And my husband, who's here in the front row, used to think I was, you know, he'd, like, roll his eyes. He is on board. He has seen this so many times. Where, you know, I probably have a list of. Of examples. Okay, here's a very quick one. Last year was the 25th anniversary of his death. The day before, I think I was in the car and I heard this song that was for anybody of any of you who loved music in the 90s. It was Beck's Loser. I was listening to it thinking, oh, this is totally, like, I don't know, this Isn't a song I remember in my house, but this is totally the kind of song Eric would have been. He had this thing where he'd, like, rock out while he was driving the car. I just thought that. So the next day, I had an errand to do, and it was the day that he had died. And I got back in the car, and I turned on the radio, turned on the car, and it was 11:11. And that song was playing. So I went home and. And texted this girl who was really close with him who still feels very connected to him. And I just texted, did Eric, like, loser? And she wrote back half an hour later with, like, yes in all capital letters, all exclamation points. And I just, like, those things aren't even. They aren't sad for me. They aren't even sweet for me. They just make me laugh because it's like, I knew you'd be here. And, you know, lots of signs like that. I love those.
- [15:57]
Heather Straughter
And I feel the same way. Like, some people are like, oh, don't you get sad when you hear this? Or whatever. I'm, like, excited by it. So one of the things with grief, so I'm, you know, sticking with the grief theme, is it can feel so isolating. And I. You know, it's funny coming off that question, because I do think people who live with grief learn how to. Can learn how to balance it with the joy, you know, that the two things can be true. You can have great joy and great sadness all within you at the same time. But that loneliness is real, Even if you're grieving with someone else and with a family. I still feel like grief is really personal. Like, the way that I respond, the way that it hits me, can be very different than, like, what Brian is doing or what anyone else like, it just. And I'm not always really nice about it, frankly, like, when I'm in. When I'm in it, like, I'm in it.
- [16:38]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Yeah.
- [16:39]
Heather Straughter
How do you handle your grief? Like, how do you live with it? Side by side?
- [16:45]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Yeah.
- [16:45]
Heather Straughter
Like, did writing this story help you?
- [16:47]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Yes. Well, one quick comment about the first part of that is that my husband now didn't know my son. My step kids didn't know him. Most of my friends now never knew him. So that in itself is quite isolating. Right. I have two other children, and they, you know, my daughter was 12 when he died. His brother, who's actually a chef in Saratoga, was 17 and was with Eric until not long before he died. So they all have their own grief. And Their own way that they handle it. And over the last 25 years, the way they felt about it has changed. And so some of the time, my son doesn't really want to talk about it, you know, But I will say that writing the book, my son is the one that actually read the entire manuscript. And it was a really good jumping off point for some conversations. He also said, which is totally valid, but I really respect the fact that he knew this and I didn't have to tell him, is that he could get back in there and rewrite every scene a different way, because that's not how it happened for him. But he does understand that it's my memoir, it's how it happened for me. So I have a lot of respect for that. But when it comes to other people, like the general Capital P public, it's been just so rewarding to hear from people who, like, none of us has exactly the same story. But I feel like my story has so many points, sadly, of intersection, whether it's parent loss or sibling loss or child loss, whether it's a difficult divorce or parenting difficult children or children who are struggling or any one of a myriad of other things. And to hear people say that it was comforting to them or whatever, that they took anything from it, that they feel less alone, makes me feel less alone. And I think that's the beauty of whether you're writing or talking or having a relationship with someone you know, is that that you feel less alone and that you increase people's empathy.
- [18:51]
Heather Straughter
So there's two things I want to say about that. One is that it's so interesting to me that because you said something that I think about a lot, how so many of your friends now and like, your life now, like, it's something that I struggle with sometimes, is that there's this whole life, this beautiful life, but they don't know.
- [19:06]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Jake, you know, I'm going to interrupt because one of the things. I'll put this question to you, but one of the things that I write about is this summer, really not long after this phone call, that same summer there, where I just felt like I could go into his room and start, you know, boxing things up. And two things struck me while I was doing that. And, you know, one of them was that we all go through this, all of us who have lost children. When people ask me how many children I have, what will I say? We all know that, you know, and I have a whole story about that. But the other one was, anybody I meet from here on in won't have known Eric and how could they possibly know me? And so hard. I mean, I could ask you that question, but it goes without saying so.
- [19:50]
Heather Straughter
Many people don't know who I was then, right? Cause it's just. It feels like the only person I am.
- [19:56]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
They don't know you and they didn't know Jake too. So there's like a twofold part to that. And Eric had such a big personality. It just seemed so. I mean, not that, like, if it was any of my kids, it wouldn't have mattered, but he left a big, like, space in the room. He was one of those of my three. He took up a lot of air in the room, you know, nobody was there.
- [20:18]
Heather Straughter
And I. I've thought about this kind of a lot. So your book is out there. Anybody who reads it, they know everything about you, right? So it's like they're traveling in this world with people who know things about you that you know nothing about them. And I struggle with that a little bit too. And not that the, you know, whoever's listening to the podcast knows a lot about me, but then it's weird. It's a weird feeling if I let myself get in my head. So, like, it must be even bigger with a book like, you're winning awards. It's a great book. People know you and you don't know them. How do you balance that?
- [20:46]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
I think that I felt like if I were going to write a memoir, I had to be vulnerable. Otherwise why write a memoir, right? If I really wanted this to speak to people or help them. It's not a self help book, but, you know, I was about as low as you can go. And sometimes we just need to read stories of other people that like, very cliche but like walked through the fire, right? I don't know that I think that a lot. I think that I just am so honored when people get in touch with me or whether they write it in a review or I get emails or whatever and say, you know, it really touched me on this level and this level. And as I said before, it's not only about grief. Although all the things I mentioned really are grief, you know, even if someone didn't die. But no, I think, I guess what I would say is that I decided to write this and I spent a lot of years working on it.
- [21:43]
Heather Straughter
I wanted. I know I said that was the last question, but I'm gonna say one more thing. I do think that that thing you talked about though, all of the intersections, because I think back to when Jake first died. And maybe the world existed, but I just didn't know. We are in a world right now where, you know, we're here talking about grief. I'm on a podcast. There's so many memoirs about it. Like, there's so many opportunities in which to share this and not feel alone. And I don't know about you, but in the beginning, I felt really alone. Like, I was. Like, I didn't know anybody else who had a child who died. Like, I just thought I was, like, the elephant in every single room. And now it feels less. So.
- [22:18]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Part of that, as much as we, you know, all need to get off our phones, there is this super connection that. That happens if you're in the right spaces. And, you know, Eric died. What year did Jake died?
- [22:31]
Heather Straughter
Jake died in 2010.
- [22:34]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Okay. So it was over 10 years between our losses. And if you think about what our connection was to the rest of the world in 1999 versus 2010, think about how much less isolated I would have felt now. And also by virtue of being in this writing community and super connected to people all over the country and in some cases, all over the world that I feel like I know really well, and I've never met them, but just, you know, I worked in Troy. I lived in Cambridge, New York. I would come home on a weekend sometimes and just be alone the whole weekend because my other two kids were in flux. And it was very sad, depressing time and very isolating. And I just think if I'd had just. I think that the Internet has opened up so much to us. Even the idea that I could write an essay and somebody would want to publish it, I had no idea. I had no idea.
- [23:28]
Heather Straughter
So I think we can open it up to questions.
- [23:31]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
I'm curious about the timing.
- [23:33]
Heather Straughter
When you say 1999, was there an event in your life that inspired you.
- [23:40]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
To begin writing your memoir? So it wasn't so much that there was an event or I just, you know, the light came on and I had inspiration. It was more that, you know, he died in 99. I remarried in 2002, moved from Cambridge eventually to West Ham Lake down near Albany. And I was kind of in the process of, you know, getting my new life stable and going. And then we had a couple of grandkids, and there was. There was a wedding in there. There was a family wedding in March of 2011. And honestly, I thought when all of this is over, I could go to therapy or I could write. So I think I'll write. So I started in Troy with Marion Roach Smith, who used to teach in person there, and a couple of people who were in that group with me are here. And we've been writing together in friends for 14 years now. So some things do last. And that's the first time I ever wrote, like, a creative nonfiction essay. The way she ran her class was, you know, you have 20 copies and you pass it out. It's really scary. And then you read it aloud, and everybody writes their comments, including her. Then a group of us formed a writing group, and we met every two weeks for seven years. So basically, every two weeks for seven years, I wrote an essay. Cause I was not gonna show up without an essay. And somewhere in there about 2017 is when then I thought, I think this really is the story that should be a book. And, oh, maybe I could just make it a collection of essays. But I knew this story needed a narrative arc. It's kind of the classic hero's journey structure. And I'm glad. But from writing Beginning to write in 2011, it took 12 years, and I got a book deal in 2023. So that's how that happened. What about the process of reading it.
- [25:29]
Heather Straughter
As you're preparing to submit it? Like, you know, editing and rereading? Was that emotional for you?
- [25:34]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Or, you know, it's funny, people will ask me a variation of that question, which is, you know, or they'll say, like, you're a brave writer. And I always say it was brave to live, was satisfying to write it. I was not emotional most of the time writing it, which I think has a lot to do with how long it. You know, I didn't start writing until, like, 12 years after most of the events in the book. And then I wrote over the course of 12 years. So, of course, you know that there's a lot of the perspective and the forgiveness and things that are in the now may not have been in the book five years ago, even. But when I am emotional, sometimes is when I read it, I have.
- [26:13]
Heather Straughter
I mean, it feels like that you.
- [26:15]
Event Host
Had grief after grief after grief after grief.
- [26:18]
Heather Straughter
And if someone out there is listening to this and they're feeling that too, do you have advice for them? What would you say to them if they feel like they're in that deep.
- [26:27]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
Dark hole right now? That's such a hard question, isn't it? We all wish we just had that beautiful answer. I have some books that I just love, not memoirs, because when you're deep in grief, you don't really have the bandwidth to read, you know, pick up somebody else's Story and read. But there are books like Megan Reardon Jarvis's Can Anyone Tell Me that? I just think is a fabulous book for people who are grieving, even if they're new in grief. And also for the support person. Like, if you care for someone, there's a section in each of her sections about, if you're the support person, here's what you can do. Because we all, even those of us like me who have had loss after loss after loss, I don't just automatically know the right. We all struggle, you know, and it's different for everyone, and we don't want to offend anybody, but then not doing anything isn't the right thing either. So for me, I think for me, it was just putting one foot in front of the other. Honestly, like, there were days that were dark and difficult, and I just somehow believed they would get better, although I had no idea how that was going to happen, and I could not see it. I. I think we all wish we had a great answer for someone who's in it, except sometimes you just really have to feel it and go through it. But then also, I think therapy is also really important.
- [27:45]
Heather Straughter
I think people are afraid sometimes to let themselves get dark or feel. And I'm always a big believer in that's the world, right? Like, some days you wake up in the morning and it sucks, and it. You feel all the feels and it. You just don't even want to deal with it. But that's not every day. When you wake up and it's not a great day, it's okay. But then the next day it can be better.
- [28:06]
Casey Mulligan Walsh
But then it's also okay when you do have a happy day. And that in the beginning, I think that's hard, right? I had this dark night of the soul period, right, leading up to Eric's death, where there were times I felt like maybe I wouldn't have a relationship with any of my kids because the divorce was so hostile and they were all struggling. And so, you know, like, we do that anticipatory grief when someone's ill. I really let go of Eric little by little in those years leading up to his death for various reasons. But I found this place that I could only get to in little spurts where I realized that we're all connected and we'll always be connected, whether we're here in body or not, and that we're not separate. We really already have everything we need within us. If we could just, like, lift the veil for a minute and see that. And I have very Specific memories of times that I was at my worst, like, in the bed, couldn't get up. And at some moment that would. One particular moment that came home to me, and it was like the weight was lifted. And I think it's hard to live there all the time, but if you know it exists, you can get back there a little easier. There's a little scene in my book when those of you who've been in Saratoga for a very long time remember Pyramid Mall. And I was in Cambridge, and it's like, he died on Saturday. We didn't have the services until the following weekend. And on Thursday, it's like, I have to go get a dress. You know, I need a dress to wear. So I think I came to, like, the Bonton, or there's this whole subplot where I. I had rehearsed what I was going to say if the. The woman asked, where do you know what event is this for? And I would say, you know, my son is the boy that died in Cambridge. And she didn't ask. And I was a little disappointed, you know, But I put on the dress that I. That I ended up getting, and I didn't want. It ended up being cream and black, but I didn't want everybody in black. I wanted a joyful day. And I put on that dress and looked in the mirror with that surreal moment and said to myself, yes, you're buying a dress to bury your son, but you're gonna go on and have happy times in this dress, too. It was hard to render that in the book because a lot of people, it was a tragic, sudden loss, and they wonder how you could even think those things. So for me, and this is why. Part of why I thought this was a book is that I just had this really unusual experience of kind of grieving Eric or letting go of him in pieces for a couple of years leading up to when he actually died. And so the day that he died, I don't mean, like, I knew it was going to happen, but there was just this deep sense of inevitability that it's very hard to explain, which is why it took me 12 years to write the book. How does your heart let you love when you've had so many losses? I never saw that as a conflict. I think that part of it is I spent so much of my life feeling alone or being afraid of being alone or feeling abandoned for obvious reasons, that I was just looking all over the place for that love. I wasn't avoiding it. It was what I wanted to. The point that I get married and I have my kids and they're my family and we all laugh at this, but they have to love you, right? Getting that love became the most important thing in my life, to the detriment of continuing my education right out of high school and all those things. It's just, as I said, even not that many years after I did that, I needed a family more than I needed an education. I'm glad you asked that, Janice, because this circles back around to I forget what we were talking about, but we were talking about this a little bit before we started. I don't know if it's surprising to me that both of us are real connectors and people people. And I was laughing that we'll stay in touch afterward. But you probably stay in touch with everybody afterward, and I tend to be the same too. I think maybe I'm just a relationship gatherer.
- [32:16]
Heather Straughter
So thank you very much everybody who came. Thank you so much for joining the special live episode with Casey Mulligan Walsh. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. If her story resonated with you, I highly recommend picking up her memoir, the Folk Catastrophe. It's honest, moving, and beautifully written. And as always, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review, sharing it with a friend, or subscribing so you don't miss the next one. And lastly, a huge thank you to Northshire Books. You hosted us and you made everyone feel welcome. It means a lot. Thank you for listening to A Place of Yes. Please follow us wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you really like this episode, please share it with a friend. It would make a world of difference if we could just reach more people and share the work that we do and the stories we want to tell. Thank you so much for watching.