Tyler Perry: Letting Go

Summary

Podcast Summary: "All There Is with Anderson Cooper"
Episode: Tyler Perry: Letting Go
Release Date: December 11, 2024

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Introduction

In the poignant episode titled "Tyler Perry: Letting Go," Anderson Cooper delves deep into the multifaceted journey of grief alongside renowned writer, director, and producer Tyler Perry. The conversation is enriched by the heartfelt contributions of Diane, a survivor of childhood abuse, who shares her profound experiences with loss and healing. This episode offers listeners an intimate exploration of grief’s complexities, resilience, and the transformative power of confronting personal trauma.

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Guest Profiles

• Tyler Perry: A luminary in the entertainment industry, Perry opens up about his traumatic childhood in New Orleans, marked by abuse and hardship. His journey to success is intertwined with his struggles and the ways he has learned to cope with past traumas.

• Diane: A courageous individual who has faced severe childhood abuse, Diane discusses her path through grief, trauma, and the steps she has taken towards healing. Her insights provide a raw and authentic perspective on dealing with profound loss.

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Key Discussions and Insights

1. Understanding Grief as a Living Entity

   • Anderson Cooper introduces the theme by referencing Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, illustrating grief's unpredictable and pervasive nature. He relates personal anecdotes, such as decorating the Christmas tree with his sons and reflecting on his deceased brother, setting the stage for a conversation about enduring loss.

   • Diane emphasizes that "Grief is a very living thing. It visits at random. You can't schedule it. You can't" ([03:58]). She advocates for allowing grief to surface naturally rather than attempting to suppress it, highlighting the importance of acknowledging and experiencing sorrow to move forward.

2. Confronting and Processing Past Trauma

   • Tyler Perry shares his journey of developing a companionship with his grief, recognizing the lingering presence of his younger self, and striving to reintegrate those hidden aspects of his personality ([06:28]).

   • Diane recounts her intensive therapy sessions, where she confronted her suppressed memories of abuse. She describes a transformative moment with her therapist, who used visual metaphors to help her understand and integrate her fractured self ([06:32] – [07:34]). Diane explains, "What I've learned about it is you can't fight it, let it be" ([19:20]).

3. The Intersection of Grief and Personal Growth

   • Tyler Perry reflects on how unhealed grief fueled his drive and success, suggesting that his inability to address pain earlier in life may have contributed to his professional achievements ([26:44]).

   • Diane echoes this sentiment, acknowledging that her own coping mechanisms, such as hypervigilance and dissociation, were both survival tools and hindrances. She notes, "Our success is equal to our trauma" ([27:34]).

4. Forgiveness and Understanding in the Face of Abuse

   • Diane shares her emotional journey towards forgiving her abusive father, attributing part of her ability to do so to understanding his own traumatic past rooted in a cycle of abuse from generations prior ([15:58] – [17:34]). She emphasizes the importance of giving grace while maintaining that abuse is never justified.

5. The Role of Family and Relationships in Healing

   • Diane discusses the profound impact of losing her mother, the only person who provided unconditional love, and how the birth of her son became a new source of love and purpose. She states, "This is when we were talking one day and he was in tears and he said, you don't know what I've been through" ([16:19]).

   • Tyler Perry connects this to his own experience, highlighting how reconnecting with his emotions has improved his relationships and overall well-being ([31:45] – [32:03]).

6. Embracing Vulnerability and Emotional Expression

   • Both guests emphasize the importance of allowing oneself to feel and express emotions openly. Diane shares her struggle with anger and the societal expectations placed on her as a Black man to suppress feelings, ultimately learning to let go and embrace her true emotions ([24:13] – [25:27]).

   • Tyler Perry admits to feeling awkward about crying but acknowledges its therapeutic benefits, stating, "it actually makes me feel better" ([25:43]).

7. Rediscovering Faith and Spirituality

   • Diane touches on how leaning into her faith has provided solace and strength during her grieving process. Her belief in the presence of loved ones after death reinforces her healing journey ([31:14] – [31:19]).

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Notable Quotes

• Diane: "Grief is a very living thing. It visits at random. You can't schedule it. You can't." ([03:58])

• Diane: "What I've learned about it is you can't fight it, let it be." ([19:20])

• Tyler Perry: "I don't know that I would have been as whatever success I've had, however you define that, I don't know that I would have had the career that I've had if I had been healed earlier on." ([26:44])

• Diane: "Your success is equal to your trauma." ([27:34])

• Tyler Perry: "It actually makes me feel better." ([25:43])

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Conclusions and Takeaways

"Tyler Perry: Letting Go" is a deeply moving episode that underscores the universal and enduring nature of grief. Through the candid conversations between Anderson Cooper, Tyler Perry, and Diane, listeners gain valuable insights into the necessity of confronting pain, embracing vulnerability, and finding strength through shared experiences. The episode serves as a powerful reminder that while grief can feel isolating, connecting with others and allowing oneself to feel can pave the way toward healing and personal growth.

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Additional Resources

Listeners are encouraged to visit the All There Is online grief community for more support and shared experiences. Upcoming episodes feature special guests like David Sedaris and Amy Sedaris, promising further explorations into the human experience of loss and resilience.

Transcript

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[Anderson Cooper]

I was rereading Joan Didion's book the Year of Magical Thinking. In it, she recounts a condolence letter she received from a Maryknoll priest who wrote, despite our preparation, indeed despite our age, the death of a parent dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call morning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean bed, aware of the depth charges now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections. Whether you're in that submarine, sitting silently on the ocean's bed, feeling the reverberations of grief's depth charges, or caught in the throes of its swirling riptide, or on a shore examining it from a safe distance, I'm glad you're here. You're not alone. This is all there is. I'm Anderson Cooper. I was decorating the Christmas tree with my sons, Wyatt and Sebastian, this weekend. I brought out from the basement boxes of ornaments from when I was a kid. One of them is an ornament my mom must have made. It has a photo of her and my dad and me and my brother in front of a Christmas tree. My brother and I are about the same ages that Wyatt and Sebastian are now. I showed Wyatt the picture, and he asked me who the other little boy in it was. It's my brother, I told him. Is he dead? Wyatt asked. He is, I said. Well, how did he die? He asked. He got sick, I said. A long time ago. I miss him a lot. Wyatt moved on to another ornament, and we moved on to talking about other things. But it got me thinking about what I'll have to tell him one day. I don't know how I'll explain it all to a child. I still don't know how to explain it all to myself. My guest today is Tyler Perry. He's a writer, director, producer, actor, entertainment mogul his list of accomplishments is long, and it's made all the more extraordinary given the very difficult childhood he had growing up in New Orleans. His mother, Maxine, who he was devoted to, was married to a man who beat Tyler brutally throughout his childhood. I recently watched a documentary about Tyler called Maxine's the Tyler Perry Story, and I found the arc of his life just incredible. I spoke with him last week.

[Tyler Perry]

A couple months ago, something popped up on my Instagram feed. It was something you said to a woman in an audience when you were sitting with Oprah.

[Diane]

Diane is here with her sister Liz. Diane, where are you? Diane has a question about letting go. Thank you. So my mom recently died and. Sorry. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Grief is a very living thing. It visits at random. You can't schedule it. You can't. I tried to work it away. I tried to drink it away. I tried to. I booked myself like crazy, and all it did was wait for me to finish. So that is good. So when it shows up, that is good. So when it shows up, however it shows up, let it show up.

[Tyler Perry]

We are just a couple of days from the anniversary of your mom's dad.

[Anderson Cooper]

How has grief shown up for you? Or how is it showing up right now?

[Diane]

How is it showing up right now? I usually book out this time of year because she died December 8, 2009. And this time of year is hard for me because she loved Thanksgiving, she loved Christmas, and then her birthday's in February. So it's really a difficult time. I woke up yesterday early in the morning, just feeling my mother really strong. Sometimes I wake up with tears in my ears or just the pillows wet because I was grieving in my sleep and didn't know it. So yesterday was really, really hard. Like, I'm carrying her and I have this pendant that went. It's shoes, baby shoes. And I bought it for her and put all of our initials on the backs of the shoes. My brothers, my sister's. And she had it. So when she passed, I had it, separated and gave it to all of the kids. So we can all carry this with us. That's on the nightstand. I'm waking up in the grief, and I'm thinking, okay, it's okay. And I started going back to 15 years ago. And you think, 15 years? Come on, man. 15 years. You should be okay, right? I thought it was fine this year. I thought, I can get through this. I can push through it until I'm at the Paley center and I'm smiling Taking photos. And I walk up to the press line, and the guy's doing an interview, and he's asking me questions, and I'm present. I'm there. And then he holds up a photo of me at 5 years old. And I didn't hear anything else. Cause the photo he showed me, I immediately saw my mother behind the Polaroid, taking it, smiling at me as I was sitting on the blanket in the backyard. That was it. The rest of the night, I was gone. I was gone. It was too. It was powerful. And her letting me know she was there. But also, it's hard to miss people. It's hard to. One more hug or one more, you're okay. You know you're okay. Cause she and I were. Even my brothers and sisters will tell you that I was her favorite. So she and I were like, lockstep. And we went through a lot of traumas together. And I would do everything I can to make her laugh and happy. So that was challenging. So grief shows up when it wants to. You can't. No matter what you think, no matter how much time has passed, it'll show up.

[Tyler Perry]

You have recently been facing things from your past.

[Anderson Cooper]

How has that been for you?

[Tyler Perry]

Because I have been doing the same thing and have. It has changed my life dramatically just in the last year. And so much of it is trying to develop a companionship with grief and recognizing the little boy that I was and how much that little boy is still so present, and trying to turn to that little boy and bring him back from the place he was hiding.

[Diane]

Bring him back from the place where he was hiding. But also, you get arrested in those moments, especially as a child, you get arrested in that memory and you hold it, even though you think, oh, I'm fine. I'm okay. When it's not processed, when it's not worked through, when nothing's done with it, it is just held. And what happens is it becomes this weight inside of you. And you're holding it and holding it and holding it. And then you hit a certain age where everything comes home, and it's like, whoa, wait a minute. What is that? And I think that's what happened for me. I was doing really well. People would say, oh, you're so prolific. You're doing so many things. But the truth of the matter is, it wasn't about being prolific as much as it was about not dealing with the abuse, not dealing with the pain. And the year my mother died, it was probably the busiest I'd ever been because I booked myself crazy to Try to work my way through all of it. And that works for a while. I think that worked all through my 20s and 30s and 40s. But come 50, there was something inside of me that started to break. And it was all of those traumas that were ripping the seams. Because what I found in these intensive therapy sessions that I had, first time in my life ever doing therapy, I went to Arizona in this intensive that you do for seven days. And I ended up staying three weeks because it was so powerful for me. But what I found as I'm sitting there, I'm talking to this incredible therapist named Christine. And she said, tell me what's going on. And I said to her, I said, I just feel like something's breaking. And I can't hold it all together anymore. I feel like. And I don't know what it is. Cause everything's okay. And I started describing a lot of what I was dealing with. And she said, turn around. I turn around in her office, and there is a painting of a child that's in the rain that's just sobbing. And then there's another painting of a man holding an umbrella holding back the rain. And she started explaining to me about the parts of us. How we're born as these beautiful, innocent children. And then this moment comes along where we have traumas and pains and life. And we become this sobbing child. And then you grow up into an adult and you become this controlling child. That's the guy with the umbrella. You know, he's holding off the rein and he's trying. But then there comes a point where he can't do it anymore. And when I saw the painting, I lost it. Because I'm like, that's exactly what I'm doing. And she said to me, do you believe that all of this can be healed? And I said, I don't know. And she says, it can. I promise you, by the time we got through the first week, I felt like a different person. Yeah. So it was really, really powerful this past year.

[Tyler Perry]

I felt like the tears are just on the brink. And they come at times I cannot control. And it is lovely because I'm feeling for the first time. And I'm trying to kind of turn to that little child and say that I see him and I talk to him now. I try to talk to him a little bit every day. And I realize this voice I've had in my head, it's been keeping me distant from everybody. Because I've been telling myself to be wary and to be on guard my entire life. And it's served me well for a long time, but it's not serving me well anymore.

[Diane]

That's exactly right. And what happens with age. What happens with age is that sobbing child begins to just scream and yell. And then with age, the controlling child, the adult that you are, because that's what we all are. We're all just big children trying to survive. That breaking point is different for many people. Some people can push past it, some people can ignore it. But for me, and it sounds like for you, it had to be addressed. And to hold on to grief and sadness and pain and trauma at this part of my life for whatever time I have left on this planet is not something I want to do anymore. I want to be pure, free, authentic in all of it. So that's what I'm leaning into.

[Tyler Perry]

I don't know how many people know about your childhood. I did not know much about it until I watched this documentary. Your mom was 13, I believe, when her mom died. Gets married at 17 to this man. Emmett is his first name. You are born when she's 24. And this man brutalized you? He tortured you?

[Diane]

Yeah.

[Tyler Perry]

Throughout your childhood?

[Diane]

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't understand it. I didn't know why. I didn't. But I innately felt that this man hated me because I wasn't his kid. I just knew it from a child. I would ask my mother all the time, is this my father? Is this my father? And her answer was always the same. I hate to tell you that, but yes, he is your father. And all the way up until the day she died, on her deathbed, I asked her, I said, is this man my father? She said, I hate to tell you this, but yes, he is. Yeah.

[Tyler Perry]

After her death, though, you learned something else.

[Diane]

Yeah. I did a DNA test and that test came back and he's not my father.

[Tyler Perry]

And you've been public about it. There was sexual abuse by multiple people of you as a child. If I could, I'd like to play something that's in the documentary in which you are talking about a memory you have of being this little boy holding onto a chain link fence. It's originally, I think, from a. You were talking to Oprah.

[Diane]

Yeah, Yeah. I remember holding onto a chain link fence and I'm holding so tight, my hands are bloody as he's hitting me. And I'm holding. Wow. Just trying to hold on for my life. I was so enraged about it. In my mind, I see myself running from me. Wow. And I couldn't get the little boy. I couldn't get the little boy to come back to me. That was, if I'm not mistaken, it was 2010. That's after my mother died. And it was the first time I was able to say a lot of the things that I hadn't been able to say before. Because as long as she was alive, the thought of me bringing pain to her or hurting her was. I'd rather not even talk about the things that I endured because she would internalize it as what she didn't do. And I couldn't bear that.

[Tyler Perry]

Did that boy ever come back to you? Or was that a moment where that little boy died and you became something else?

[Diane]

I think I have said that in the past that I feel like that part of me died. But what I found in these sessions was that sobbing child. That's. There's this separation of the two now. I know that in life and going through life and going through grief, going through trauma, you. You separate into different individuals. And part of the work that I was doing was fusing that child that never came back to me, to the adult that I am. And as you were saying earlier, how you talk to your younger self, you encourage your younger self. That's. I often do that now. Talk to him, Encourage him, thank him. I'm going to take you with me. You're safe now. We're safe. We're together. Just reminding myself that I'm a whole person and I don't have to be in these parts.

[Tyler Perry]

It makes a difference. Honestly. When this was proposed to me, it sounded cheesy to me. Like, talk to this little child. I was like, really? Do I have to? I gotta say, it is deeply healing and deeply powerful.

[Diane]

What I found with having my son. It was five years after my mother had passed. Cause when she died, I felt the most alone in my life. So unloved. I didn't feel like anyone loved me because. Which is. Cause I knew she was the only person on the planet that really loved me the way that she did. So when she died, I felt like that went with her. And I felt just this incredible isolation until my son was born.

[Tyler Perry]

My mom used to quote a Scottish philosopher named I think McLaren, who said, Be kind because everybody you meet is fighting a great battle. And my mom actually painted it on a mantelpiece on a fireplace. My mom would paint her fireplaces different. Like actually paint it herself. She had that saying on a fireplace for a while. And you said something about Emmett, the man who was so terrible to you, that at a certain point in your mid-20s you learned his story, you learned who he had been as a child and what had happened to him as a child. And that allowed you, if not to forgive, to at least understand some of his story. And that made a difference. And I think that's such an important thing. Everybody we pass on the street has grief or if they don't, they will. And we don't know the battles that they are facing.

[Diane]

Exactly. Yeah. This is what allowed me to forgive him, which I did, I really did. And it also allowed me to give him grace because we were talking one day and he was in tears and he said, you don't know what I've been through. I was like, no, I don't what he want. But he couldn't talk. He wasn't the person that couldn't. He had a third grade education, so he couldn't express himself through talking. That's not what he did. He could express himself through building and working and beating and fighting and being angry. But he was when he was 2 years old, this is what I've got from other gotten from other relatives. When he was two years old, he was found in the drainage canal. He and his brother and sister, a white man found them on a horse. He found them there. This is in rural Louisiana. And they brought them to a 14 year old girl named to raise. And May's father, Papa Rod, was a former slave and he beat his children. And May, the 14 year old that was raising Emmett would beat him too, tie him in a potato sack and beat him if he did anything wrong. So there was this cycle of abuse from slavery. So what he knew to do is beat his children. Not hug, not love, but beat them. And understanding that didn't make it right. And I want people to know that doesn't make it right. But for me to get the understanding allowed me the pathway to be able to forgive him and give him grace. Yeah.

[Anderson Cooper]

More of my conversation with Tyler Perry in a moment.

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[Anderson Cooper]

We're back with Tyler Perry.

[Tyler Perry]

What have you learned in your grief that would be helpful to somebody listening to this?

[Diane]

Oh, gosh, that's really good. What I've learned is that it is what it is. I would try and suppress it or not cry when it came or just push it to the side. You have to let it visit at will. You have to let it be what it's going to be so that you can move through it. And I really do feel like it's a living thing. Like it is a visitor that will knock at the strangest moment, at the worst time. And I'm like, okay, what is this moving through me? And I would just tell anybody. What I've learned about it is you can't fight it, let it be. Because in order for it to get better, eventually it's got to move through you. I have this friend, her name is Cassie. When my mother died, her father had died and she really struggled big time with it and he had died many years before. And I was having a moment one year around this time and I'm talking to her on the phone, trying to find comfort in anything, and she says, you're going to be okay. You're going to be okay. I'm like, when? When she Sundays, in about nine years. And I thought, that's not comforting. Why would you tell me that nine years? But, but she was right. It took her about nine years to just be okay when the day happened. And for me, it was about nine years that I was beginning to turn the corner and it wouldn't show up. In a way that it would take my breath away, because when my mother first passed, it would literally take my breath away. I'd find myself gasping for air when I would think about her, or I'd fall asleep and she'd be in my dreams, and I would feel myself waking up, and I'm fighting to stay asleep so I can just talk to her one more time.

[Tyler Perry]

You've said that after your mom died, you weren't sure you would survive. I mean, that you were drinking. You'd said at one point that if you hadn't had so many work commitments, you might not have stuck around.

[Diane]

No, no, that wasn't. What was the point? You know, what was the point? What was the reason, again, feeling that level of love leave me, but also.

[Tyler Perry]

Because all of the. So much of the drive that you had and have but was about her was about providing for her and making sure that she had everything she could ever possibly imagine that she wanted.

[Diane]

Yeah, that was the goal and the purpose. And then when she was gone, so was that desire and that drive to keep pushing and working hard. You know, the strangest thing was because there was so much trauma, because there was so much poverty, I never thought I had enough for her. I always thought, this is not gonna be enough to make sure she's okay. And she never asked me for a thing. But, yeah, losing her was losing the love that I felt, but also losing the purpose to keep working and grinding that hard.

[Tyler Perry]

Yeah, your mom got to see everything. There's a moment in the documentary where you've opened up your studio, and your mom is there with amazing stars, and you look at her and you say, you see what your baby boy did?

[Anderson Cooper]

Yeah, she saw it.

[Tyler Perry]

She got to see it all.

[Diane]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a. That was a good moment that night. She. She was having. The irony in that, is she was having trouble seeing because the diabetes and the things she was dealing with, she was having a lot of trouble being able to see. So she was. She was holding my hand, and we were out. Out going through the stages, and she said, everything is so beautiful. And I said, how do you know? Can you see it? She said, I can feel it, you know, so. She was wonderful, man. She was wonderful. Anderson. I'm angry, man. I'm so angry. I'm so angry. That's a part of the grief, too. I'm angry. That's another part that you have to be careful with when you're grieving. And this is why around this time of year, I go away because I don't know how it'll show up, but the anger is. Oh, God. I remember the first Mother's Day when people were like saying, happy Mother's Day. And I'm like, I don't even want to hear it, you know? And then to see friends who won't even call their mother or talk to their mother, they get the business from me. I'm just like, what is wrong with you? And I would get angry because I wish I had her. So I'm just working my way through the stages of grief. Was hard. I think the anger was the hardest one.

[Tyler Perry]

I have felt this rage, the. It's the hard hearted rage of a child. And I remember feeling it as a little kid, just terrified when my dad died and stunned, but just filled with rage that has continued throughout my entire life. And I think there's. It's been fuel in so many things I've done, but it's. Yeah, it's hard.

[Diane]

Yeah. I wasn't allowed the rage. I wasn't allowed to have that because culturally, just being 6 foot 6 and black, there was this. From the time I was in school, it was like, you're big. Get to the back of the line. You're too big. So I wasn't allowed to have that kind of freedom to just be enraged about something. So anger, my anger was quiet and slow, slow to build. But I felt it more with her than anything. I remember being in some of these sessions and I felt this anger coming up out of me and I just. And the therapist, she's sitting, little white woman, she's saying, let it go, let it go. And all I could think of and hear was, you're going to destroy this room. You can't do that. You're too big. And by the end of the sessions, we were getting to a point. One therapist said to me, because you see multiple therapists, but one said to me, you deserve to take up as much space on this planet as anyone else because you're here. You don't have to be smaller. You don't have to make yourself smaller. And I was able to just let it all go.

[Tyler Perry]

Do you, do you cry? I mean, I've never been really a crier. I have been this last year and I don't know. Yeah, I feel awkward about it and weird about it, but it bubbles up a lot for me now.

[Diane]

Since I started this program, I have wrung myself dry. I constantly go to water thinking about my mother, my life, my son, how hard I've worked to be here, the cost, the price to Be here, all of those things. But it feels good to be able to cleanse. And of course, growing up, boys don't cry. You're a man, you're taught to push down every feeling, not really be able to express it. So to have a 10 year old who is clear in his expressions of what he feels, when he feels joy, when he's upset, we've given him this great brain of room to be able to come to us in any of those states. And when I'm looking at him or hugging him or saying I love you to him, or giving him that space or having a conversation with him where he gets to state an opinion or he gets to have some sort of say in what's going. All of those moments are helping the little boy that I was heal.

[Tyler Perry]

I don't know that I would have been as whatever success I've had, however you define that, I don't know that I would have had the career that I've had if I had been healed earlier on. I don't know if I was not filled with rage and driven by pain. I don't know that I would have worked the level that I've worked at.

[Diane]

Constantly or the courage to do it. Yeah. And the same for me. The same for me. So I understand that fully. Oprah and I talk about this all the time. She said to me one day, God, I don't know who we would be had we grown up in a house full of love. Because when I got into this trauma session, the first thing she said to me is, and this I will never forget, she said, your success is equal to your trauma. And I thought, wow, I've had some enormous successes in my life. And I thought, yeah, the traumas were pretty, pretty bad too.

[Tyler Perry]

You also connect the trauma and your ability as a child to go into kind of other rooms in your head during it with your ability to dream up comedies and dramas and write scripts and work at the level that you have. Things you developed in your mind as a child to cope have served you in your career.

[Diane]

Yeah. When I started these sessions, when we talked about my childhood, she was clear about what happened to you is you had to be hypervigilant. You had to look at 10 things at once to survive. You had to walk in a room and calculate every moment in the room in order to know that you were safe. And that ability is in you as a man. It's still as strong as it was then. And also my ability to disassociate it was during those horrible moments that I could leave, like, not literally, but in my mind, be somewhere else. And then when the moment was over, I would come back to myself. But as I'm coming back to myself, I had no memory of what had happened. Like, there'd be a hole in the moments of the memory. So as I got older, it wasn't just happening for bad things, it was happening for good things, too. Anything that was heightened in me, I would leave, wouldn't be there, wouldn't remember the moment. So when I write a script or story or movie, I get quiet. And I can be in that world for hours and see everything that's happening. And I can use that disassociation as now, use it as a gift.

[Tyler Perry]

So for you right now, just circling back to really how we began. For you right now, grief is what. What does grief look like?

[Diane]

For me right now, grief is a wave. It's a wave. And my prayer for anyone who's going through grief is that it comes in waves. And how do you stand on that wave? Do you let it drown you? Or do you have a surfboard where you can try and get on it? Sometimes there are gentle ones where it's just like, wow, that is a wonderful memory. Gosh, that's a wonderful memory. Then it's like, whoa. And last night I was in a tsunami. It was a tsunami.

[Tyler Perry]

Do you feel your mom? For the first time since I was a little kid, I now feel.

[Anderson Cooper]

Like.

[Tyler Perry]

I can feel my dad. I can feel my brother inside me in a weight.

[Diane]

Yeah.

[Tyler Perry]

That I've never experienced before.

[Diane]

Yeah. Yeah. And how dare I say that it's because you made room for it. Because maybe when it was blocked before and you were putting everything away, there was no room for it. But now that you've made room for the grief, you can feel them getting closer. I understand that. So. Well, I've been cradled by my mother since she's gone. Cradled. And it just felt like. What is this feeling? When she first passed, I could smell her. My senses were. She was that close to me. And I'll never forget because she died at 64, December 8th, right around Christmas. And I had a dream about. I got that. She given me a gift. This red air, red bi wing airplane that she'd given me. And I was like, well, I was so happy that she'd given it to me. And I woke up, of course, sad. Go downstairs to the Christmas tree. My sister gives me a gift. She said, I bought this for you. I open it up and it is the exact airplane that was in my Dream. And I hadn't told anybody but my aunt. My aunt and I look each other. I had to leave the room. They're like, what happened? My sister's like, what happened? What did I do wrong? If you didn't do anything, I just about this plane. So I do believe that they are with us. I do believe that they are close. I really, really do believe that.

[Tyler Perry]

And you feel that?

[Diane]

Oh, yeah, I feel it. I feel it, I know it. There's a knowing in it for me.

[Tyler Perry]

To me, the irony is I pushed all this stuff down so that I wouldn't feel sadness. And it left me feeling alone and disconnected from my dad and my brother. But now, at 57, I allow myself to feel sadness and that pain which I've been running from. And yet it actually makes me feel better. It doesn't make sense on paper, but it's absolutely the case.

[Diane]

But also, I think at the time of life where you are with a father and children and older, I think you were ready for it now, because there are many times when people aren't ready to face it. Or what would you have been now had you been able to get in touch with it earlier?

[Tyler Perry]

To somebody who's grieving out there, is there anything else you would say?

[Diane]

It's gonna be about nine years. So again, my hope is we're talking about this. My mother was only 64 when she died, and the last seven years of her life were really difficult through illness. But also her whole life was just hard. And I don't want to reduce her life. And I would say this to anyone who's going through grief. Don't reduce the person's life to the moment or how they died. Lean into the good in it, because the grief is going to be hard. Lean to the good times and the good moments and the smiles and the laughs. And that's when grief really overwhelms me. That's what I try to do. That's what I was doing all day today. All day today. I didn't leave the room after last night. I stayed in the bed. I've got photos of her. And I was just trying to think myself happy inside of the grief. And I was just thinking about the good times we had. And when me and my mother at church, oh, gosh, we love to go to church together. And I love to see her singing and in the choir. And she could not sing. She could not carry a note in a bucket, but she would just try singing her heart out after all the hell she had just went through. The house, she would just be happy and smiling. This is when I really, really started to lean into God and faith and Jesus is when it's like, God, I need to know this God that makes her feel like that. So I'm trying to surf it so that I can allow myself to be in the pain of it and the heartbreak of it, but also remember some of the good times and the good moments.

[Tyler Perry]

Tyler Perry, thank you so much, Anderson.

[Diane]

Thank you, brother. I appreciate it very much.

[Anderson Cooper]

The day after we recorded this interview, a colleague of Tyler's, Steve Mensch, who ran his movie studio, died in a plane crash. Tyler wrote a tribute to him on his Instagram page, saying, in part, life is but a moment. We are like vapors. Hold strong to the people you love and tell them. You can watch the video version of this podcast on CNN's YouTube channel or at our online grief community, CNN.com all thereisonline. You can also listen there to voicemails from podcast listeners about their own experiences with loss and grief. And you can leave comments of your own and hear all three seasons of our podcast next week. Two very special guests, writer David Sedaris and his sister, actress and writer Amy Sedaris.

[David Sedaris]

I cannot believe I lived through my mother's death. I can't believe it.

[Tyler Perry]

In what way?

[David Sedaris]

Because I just thought I wouldn't be able to live without her or just without her love. Without her love.

[Diane]

Yeah.

[David Sedaris]

Well, I just adored her. Just adored her. And when my mother died, I was like, he was mama's boy. I'm alone. I don't have anybody in my corner that way. And it happened really fast. She called and said she had cancer, and then three months later, she was dead. And I remember there was her chemo medication and stuff, and we were so mad at it. Do you know what I mean? And just throwing it into a trash can. And my father's pulling it out because he wants to get a refund. He wants to take it to the drugstore and get a refund on it.

[Sleep Number Advertiser]

Wow.

[David Sedaris]

Now, wait a minute. I remember the priest came to the house and my mother had a jigsaw table on them. And so we were just throwing. Oh, I see you're finishing that in honor of your mother. And it's like, get out of here. Who let him in here? It's just so dumb. Like, why do you have to even ruin it by saying crap? Like, then we're gonna frame it and then we're gonna. We laugh so hard. Like, yeah, we just laugh so hard because that's how we dealt with it.

[Anderson Cooper]

That's next week on All There Is. All There Is is a production of CNN Audio. The show is produced by Grace Walker and Dan Bloom. Our senior producer is Hayley Thomas, Dan Dezzulla is our technical director and Steve Lichtai is our executive producer. Support from Nick Godsell, Ben Evans, Chuck Haddad, Charlie Moore, Carrie Rubin, Carrie Pritchard, Shimree Chitrit, Ronald Bettis, Alex Manaseri, Robert Mathers, John Deonnora, Lainey Steinhardt, Jamis Andrest, Nicole Pesaru and Lisa Namorow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage.

[Amazon Prime Advertiser]

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