What Grief Teaches Us About Love w/ Jule Kim | Ep 398

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Futur with Chris Do – Ep 398

What Grief Teaches Us About Love w/ Jule Kim

Date: November 15, 2025
Host: Chris Do
Guest: Jule Kim

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Overview

In this unusually raw and personal episode, Chris Do sits down with his friend and coach Jule Kim to talk about grief, prompted by the recent, sudden loss of Jule’s brother. While The Futur typically focuses on design, business, and personal growth, this conversation dives headfirst into the realities of grief, family complexity, and what love really looks like when someone is gone. Together, they share perspectives, philosophical questions, and hard-won advice for anyone facing loss—now or in the future.

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Key Discussion Points

Why Talk About Grief?

• Jule initiated the conversation after losing her brother suddenly ([00:43]).
• Grief is universal, yet rarely openly discussed in media or everyday conversation; everyone will encounter it at some point.
  • “I keep thinking, no person should learn these things this way... You feel like you're swept up in this hurricane, just this chaos.” (Jule, [00:43])
• Trigger warnings are given for listeners struggling with depression or recent loss ([00:00]).

Personal Experiences with Loss

• Chris reflects on limited direct experience—losing only his grandmother who lived a long, full life ([02:26]).
• Jule’s losses have included friends, pets, and now the profound loss of her brother, noting how her ability to feel and process grief has changed as she’s matured ([03:57]).
  • “Part of me thinks, well, this is the price you pay. You learn to feel more and therefore you feel more... But my God, I don’t think we talk about this particular aspect.” (Jule, [03:57])
• Jule describes the unique emptiness and pain of losing her brother, who was a mentor and caretaker as a child.
• She discusses the particular challenges of growing up in an emotionally repressive culture (tiger parenting, Asian family norms).

Family Dynamics and Estrangement

• Jule’s family was fractured, with deep-rooted dysfunction and hierarchy ([11:53]).
• Her brother was the "black sheep," estranged from parents and siblings except Jule.
• A rare visit this year reignited their bond: “It was the first time that I think we really saw each other as people” ([11:53]).
  • Memorable: Her brother crying with pride seeing her accomplishments (affirmation deck, coaching), sharing mutual vulnerabilities and secrets.
• Regret and gratitude intermingle: thankfulness for that connection, but sorrow for years not fully understood.

Logistics of Death: The Messy Side

• Legal Affairs: The crucial importance of having wills, trusts, and clear directives.
  • "If you don't have your stuff in place… It goes far beyond how will you allocate your assets, who gets what. To me, that doesn't even matter.” (Jule, [21:14])
• Medical Realities: Unexpected health issues and the lack of preparation leave families in chaos ([21:14]).
• Organ Donation: Nuanced ethical and logistical snares; being an organ donor is rare, and families must navigate the medical process, often without knowing the deceased’s true wishes ([21:14], [30:11]).
• Practical advice on emergency contacts and technology: set up "In Case of Emergency" on smartphones and share locations.
  • “Please set up emergency contacts on your phone… You don’t want what happened to my brother.” (Jule, [30:11])
• Insights on financial clarity: beneficiary designations, the pitfalls of relying only on employer life insurance, and organizing digital access ([30:11]).

Cultural & Philosophical Perspectives on Grief

• Chris and Jule discuss how cultural background shapes the way we process loss and family obligation ([19:41]).
• Chris adopts a pragmatic, almost stoic approach: “I have a fairly finite view… When I’m dead, it won’t really matter what I leave behind” ([38:55]).
• Jule highlights the importance of ritual and closure, not for the dead, but for survivors:
  • “You don’t have these rituals for the person who’s no longer here. You have them for the people who remain so that they can have closure.” (Jule, [41:19])
• Debate on legacy: Jule’s brother craved significance, while Chris focuses on the present and minimizing the burden for survivors.

The Unresolvable Questions

• The brain’s struggle to accept loss—discussed through neuroscience and personal anecdote ([41:19]):
  • “Every day, multiple times a day, I’m almost talking to my brother in my mind... Where are you? I hope you’re okay.” (Jule)
• How long and in what way should we "hold on" to someone who is gone? Is continued grief a form of honoring, or a wound we keep reopening?
  • “People will mistakenly think that is what they have to do in order to keep this person’s memory alive.” (Jule, [51:41])
• Can one ever “do enough” for a loved one who’s gone? Jule wrestles with guilt, regret, and what it means to "do everything you can" ([65:01]).

Boundaries, Self-Care, and Legacy

• Tangible friction between duty to others and duty to oneself:
  • Chris: "Do everything you can...without doing harm to yourself. That's a critical part." ([68:28])
  • Jule: “All I can say is that the only way I've been able to navigate myself through this has been acceptance.” ([72:31])
• Both discuss the fantasy of a world where everyone tended their own needs so well, truly needing no “rescue” ([74:48]).
• Dangers of making others "projects" to avoid one’s own issues; the contrast between short-term fixes (band-aids) and deeper self-work.

Practical Takeaways for Listeners

• Get legal/financial affairs in order: wills, beneficiaries, insurance, and plans for children ([25:49], [30:11]).
• Communicate wishes, prepare messages: Consider recording a video or writing letters for loved ones to find “if you’re not here one day” ([58:33]).
• Use technology proactively: ICE contacts, shared locations, accessible accounts ([30:11], [32:37]).
• Accept emotions, don’t suppress: Whether emotion comes in tidal waves or small ripples, give it space, find safe support ([83:28]).
• Reach out for help: If struggling, don't hesitate to contact crisis lines or seek therapy ([81:03]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Grief’s Education:

  • “There are so many things I’m learning… no person should learn these things this way.” — Jule ([00:43])

• Platitudes & Presence:

  • “Hopefully they will be people who have some level of awareness and don’t try to give you stupid platitudes or tell you to cheer up.” — Jule ([03:57])

• Family Estrangement and Connection:

  • “The only person that I know and love dearly… my grandmother… Her children love her, her grandchildren, great grandchildren love her… At that point we are all ready for it.” — Chris ([02:26])
  • “He was the one who taught me rules… how to handle our parents… He taught me so many things.” — Jule on her brother ([03:57])

• Rituals & Closure:

  • “You don’t have these rituals for the person who’s no longer here. You have them for the people who remain so that they can have closure.” — Jule ([41:19])

• On Legacy:

  • “He just wanted to know that he helped people, the people in his inner circle, that he helped them and that he lifted them up.” — Jule ([41:19])
  • “I have a fairly finite view on this, where I don’t think there’s an afterlife…when I’m dead, it won’t really matter what I leave behind.” — Chris ([38:55])

• Raw Regret:

  • “It will be one of the biggest regrets of my life for not standing up for him more within our family.” — Jule ([72:31])
  • “We don’t get do-overs, Jule. The past is an imagination and so is the future. All we have is right now.” — Chris ([68:28])

• Permission & Boundaries:

  • "Do everything in your power to help other people along the way without doing harm to yourself.” — Chris ([68:28])

• Chris on Death & Living Well:

  • “If I die fishing or doing the things that I love… so be it. I would rather do that than sit in a cubicle pushing paperwork." ([60:51])

• Jule’s Message to Her Brother:

  • “The one thing I would want him to know is that we loved him… The one thing you don’t want anybody in your life to go out of this world feeling is that they were unwelcome, that they were unloved.” ([85:12])

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• [00:43] – Jule’s intro: sudden loss of her brother and her motivations for the episode
• [03:57] – Suppressed emotions in Asian culture & personal reflections on grief's depth
• [11:53] – Family estrangement, last visit and reconnection with her brother
• [21:14] – Practical lessons: legal, medical, and family preparedness for loss
• [30:11] – Organ donation, logistical complications, and tech tips
• [38:55] – Chris’s views on legacy, afterlife, and how to handle one’s affairs
• [41:19] – The necessity of rituals and dealing with ongoing grief
• [54:30] – Grieving on pause when taking charge for family
• [68:28] – Boundaries, self-care, and “helping without harm”
• [72:31] – Acceptance, regrets, and honesty about emotional capacity
• [81:03] – Final reflections, support for listeners in crisis
• [85:12] – Jule's final words to her brother

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Tone and Takeaways

The episode is unflinchingly honest, blending Chris’s matter-of-fact, philosophical pragmatism with Jule’s emotional vulnerability and self-awareness. They mix humor (“Congratulations on being an adult” after making a will), deep cultural insight, and hard advice listeners can immediately use.

The central message—the greatest lessons of grief are not logistical, but about the necessity (and limits) of love, connection, boundaries, and the ongoing work of acceptance. The episode ends with heartfelt encouragement to prepare for the unpredictable, love fiercely now, and ask for help when you need it.

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If You’re Short on Time – Top Action Items

• Talk to your loved ones about your wishes now—don’t leave decisions to chance.
• Get your legal, financial, and digital affairs in order.
• Set up emergency contacts and explain your plans to those you trust.
• Support those grieving with presence, not platitudes.
• Forgive yourself for what you cannot change—accept and move forward.
• If you're struggling, reach out (e.g., 988 Crisis Lifeline in the US).

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In Chris’s words:
"The world is better with you in it… Somebody in the world cares deeply about you and we would all miss you if you were gone." ([81:03])

Transcript

[A]

Hey everybody, what's up? On this episode, I'm going to be talking to my good friend Jewel, who's recently gone through some very dramatic, emotional impactful changes in her life. And this is a warning for everyone who's going through states of depression. Maybe you've lost a friend or loved one and if you're not ready to hear it, this is your trigger warning. Would love for you to listen to this and share in our story. But if you're not in a mental emotional state where you can do that, thank you for tuning in. You may want to skip this episode. And if you have little ones listening that aren't quite ready to process these weighty conversations, I would also suggest you screen this before listening. With that, let's get into this episode.

[B]

I believe I came to you maybe roughly a month ago and I said, chris, can we do an episode on grief? And you said, we can talk about whatever, but the timing of this right now is because my brother passed away and it was very sudden. Throughout the whole process, I keep thinking to myself, the things that I'm learning, the things that I wish I could do again, if I could have a do over, like, I would do this differently. I wish I'd known these things. There are so many things I'm learning. And I keep thinking, no person should learn these things this way. And when you're on this kind of crash course timeline with everything happening, when you have somebody who's in the hospital, you didn't anticipate this. You are struggling with this conflict of there's so many emotions, you're crushed by everything going on, the very real possibility of sudden loss. There are strange family dynamics. If you have a family like mine, and then the doctors are in and out, there are decisions to be made. And through the whole thing, you keep wondering, like you feel like you're swept up in this hurricane, just this chaos, and yet there are these decisions that have to be made and they can't really be undone. You can't go back and say, hey, I changed my mind, like, what's son is sun? So that's what I felt like. Maybe that would be useful for some of your audience to hear because I don't think you've ever done an episode on grief as far as I know. And I don't really see this topic being approached very much in the media in general because guess what, nobody likes to talk about this, even though it's one of those weird subjects, that it's inevitable you will face grief at some point in your Life. So that's what I'm teeing up for today.

[A]

What do you think I want to say? I love talking about this, but grief is not something I've had to deal with. I've not really lost people that I really care about in a way that has broken me. Both my parents are still alive. My grandpa on both sides passed long before I became conscious of them. They passed away before I was born. And the only person that I know and love dearly is my grandmother who passed and she was like 99 years old. So at that point we are all ready for it. She's lived a long, good life. Her children love her, her grandchildren, great grandchildren love her. And it's one of these things like she's so sweet because she's a very religious, devout Catholic woman. And she asked the priest when she was not so able bodied anymore if okay if she prayed at home. She's the kind of grandmother who would call her kids my dad. Did you go to church? I didn't see you at church. Did you go to the one before, after me? And that's when we were like, yeah, we better show up so we don't lie to grandma. And there was a brief period of time when she raised us for a little bit when my parents were still reorganizing and moving from Kansas City to San Jose where every night we would do a full on mass at home, like for an hour's worth of praying, 15 Hail Marys and then it's 10 Our Fathers who aren't in heaven, just non stop. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's my grandma. So I think now I'm at a stage in my life where I've made peace with every single person that I really care about. So should they pass expected or unexpectedly, I'm good. So this is a new topic for me.

[B]

I think we share some of the perspectives in common because until this happened I thought to myself, I'm good with the people in my life. Just like what you said. I'm generally fairly peaceful with my life, myself and the people I know. And I've made choices of who I keep in my life for a reason. Now we're talking about this is my brother. So just like how you said with your Grandmother, she was 99 when she passed. The one thing that I've been prepared for my entire life is my parents. They had me late in Life, they were 41 and 40 when they had me. So unusually towards the older end of the spectrum, whereas today you see this a lot More commonly, but back then, not as much. So I grew up with this feeling of dread because in our family, the men tended to live up until 60. Before my dad, the oldest living male, was 60. Today, my dad is 85, and he's been the one person that I've always been terrified with. Just pass on. So that's been the thing that I've been anticipating with a lot of anxiety. But I never really foresaw my brother passing on. He passed in July, and he would have turned 54 had he made it that long. He's only 54, same age as you. To me, that's nothing. That's so young. So there's this shock of you never saw it coming. Here's this person. You have, that sense of the candle being snuffed out too soon, too early. And you experience grief, not only over this loss, suddenly this absence. There's this vacuum in your life. But then there's all the stuff they're never going to see with you, only this stuff you're never going to get to do anymore. And for you, your grandmother may have raised you for some period of time. For me, it was my brother, interestingly enough. My parents worked 24 7. They couldn't be there for me all the time. And even though we all lived in the same house, my parents actually sort of appointed my brother as my keeper. So he was the one who taught me rules. He was the one who taught me values and to get along with people. He taught me how to play chess. He taught me how to handle our parents. Hey, you know, dummy, like, you don't have to argue with them on every single little thing. Just say yes and then go do your own thing. Just be smart about which fights you choose to have. So he's taught me so many things, and I think, yeah, I think I'm still a little bit shocked at how suddenly all of this happened. I will mention that this isn't my first encounter with death. When I was 18 or 19, my best friend at the time, the best friend I'd had all through middle school and high school, we went off to college our separate ways. The summer after my freshman year, she got into a car accident. I believe it was with a drunk driver, and she was killed. That was the first time I remember encountering this. And maybe this sounds terrible, but I think that I was too emotionally immature to fully grasp the significance of this. And we were close, but it's not like I thought about her every day. It's not like we talked on the phone every Day there was some distance by that point. So I felt grief and I felt shocked. The funeral was very sudden, so I never got to see her. It just didn't hit me the same way, not on any level remotely close. And so I wonder why. You know, I look back over the periods of my life, I've had a co worker who passed on. There was another student in my high school who passed also from a drunk driver, as you can guess, Alabama and not the safest place to drive. Anyway, two years ago, my cat who I'd had for 17 years, she also passed. And I think that was one of the first moments of feeling real pain. And I'm sure there are going to be a lot of people who listen to this and think that I'm crazy for saying that. I'm not trying to make a comparison. But you got to understand as an Asian American who came from a very tiger parent upbringing with the typical Asian culture that tells you to stuff down your emotions and put away anything negative you're not really allowed to feel. You've never been taught to handle or manage your emotions in any kind of meaningful way. And then these things happen. You live most of your life very emotionally suppressed. And I would say that it's not until maybe the last 10 years, so maybe from 30 or 35 and onward that I've started to really come in tune with my emotions. So part of me thinks, well, this is the price you pay. You learn to feel more and therefore you feel more, you feel more deeply. And of course on the flip side of that is you feel all of the positive things more deeply as well. You open yourself up to the nuances, the full spectrum. But my God, I don't think we talk about this particular aspect. And of course grief in general tends to look very different for different people. It's not going to hit you the same. There are going to be some people who want you to just leave them alone, like get out of their face, let them do their thing in isolation. And I always thought that I would be one of those people, but I find that I'm not. I find myself needing people around me because despite all of the pain that I'm carrying, feeling, there are these moments where I feel like there's a hole in the middle of my chest. It's always better to have people there and hopefully they will be people who have some level of awareness and don't try to give you stupid platitudes or tell you to cheer up and it'll all be better. Better or time Heals all. It's like, please, please stop. I'm not looking for your advice.

[A]

Yeah, you're in territory that I don't know. So oftentimes people like me struggle with people going through their emotions, whether they be on one end of the spectrum or the other, because we don't know what's right for that person in that moment. Because everybody's so different, unique. Some people want to be held. Some people do want the empty platitudes. Some people just sit there and listen and don't say nothing. Or I need you to say this exact phrase in a certain way so I can feel it. So I know we're connected. Man, I have no idea. So now I'm kind of in limbo, like the deer in the headlights. Because I know when I'm going through some stuff, unless I specifically ask for help, I don't really want people asking to help me, especially because most of them don't know how to help. I'd just rather be left alone to sort it out myself. So it's kind of like we're all trying to sort it out and figure out what the other person needs, not what we want. So it's very confusing. But let's talk about your brother for a bit. I know before he passed, and he passed suddenly and unexpectedly, as you say. He was my age, still young. Let me just put that out there. And you were in dialogue with him, There were things that you were doing together, and then all of a sudden all that's gone. My only way of processing any of this is, thank goodness you had that time together. Because we don't want to live not fully expressing who we are and how we think and feel. But we also don't want to die with that kind of regret. Whether we're dying or the other person's dying, that would suck. Things that were unsaid, unresolved either bitterness or some kind of anger we're holding on to. Where did you guys leave it before this accident happened?

[B]

Well, we were on good terms, and maybe it would be helpful if we kind of did a little bit of a rewind here. So I've alluded to my family, and maybe some people have seen my posts on Instagram or LinkedIn talking about my mom essentially being a little bit cray cray. I'm just going to be super blunt. My family has been very dysfunctional. And by dysfunctional, I mean we've had parents who were very rigid in their upbringing, had very strong opinions, principles on how we should be living our lives. There wasn't a lot of room for steering off the path. And to be frank, there wasn't a lot of room for conversation. Asian society tends to be very, very hierarchical. And to even question anything or to want to talk about something, anything outside of immediate obedience or compliance is seen as disrespect. I think a lot of cultures fall into the same category. So my brother has always been kind of known as the black sheep in the family. Now that I look back, I think what I saw as weakness is when he's run away from home sometimes, because my parents, to be honest, they did things that were very. Not right, very unkind. He left, and I didn't understand these things. But now when I look back on his life, I realized that is exactly a person demonstrating boundaries. When you are treated in a manner in which you do not appreciate, you did not ask for, and is even harmful to you at certain times, your only option is to leave. And he did that multiple times. And because of that, he was unfortunately branded as black sheep, as maybe even traitor. There have been many unkind labels thrown around in our family about him. And because of that, he was estranged from the rest of my family. I was the only person he spoke to. And if you think about that, that's hard to go through life when you have a family, but the family is not there for you. And I can only imagine the kind of choices he's made in his life because of that. Because he didn't have that support structure like I did. And I had the support structure because I mainly complied with what my parents wanted. And God forbid, the minute you step out of line, the minute you tell our parents, no, they do not take it well, which I think a lot of people can relate to. So the last time our family had even seen each other was at my wedding, which was 10 years ago. So just picture that for a second. I think a lot of listeners, you typically see the rest of your family on a holiday at least once a year. If not Christmas, maybe it's New Year's, maybe it's Thanksgiving. If you're in the US it's something. Or maybe somebody gets married and that doesn't happen every day. And that was the event that brought my Entire family together 10 years ago. They had not seen him since that. So my parents and my sister and my other brother had not seen him since 10 years ago. Now, the thing that you're referring to is my brother and I had always been a little bit closer to each other. Again, he's had quite a Bit of influence and impact on my life. We hadn't seen each other maybe in the last seven years. We vacationed together seven years ago and then hadn't seen each other. He, all of a sudden this year says, hey, can I visit you? And I was like, of course, you're welcome to visit anytime. He visits, and he brings his oldest son. And it was so good to see him. I myself did not realize just how much your family is a root for you if you allow that to happen. What had happened in his life is he had been a casino dealer, and he had recently quit his job. He'd gotten into crypto and investing over the past five years. So it was interesting that our lives even kind of mirrored each other on similar transitions, just into different fields. So five years ago, I was getting into coaching. Five years ago, he was getting into investing. So he had quit his job and gone all in on crypto. So I'd asked him to teach me about investing. And we hadn't really spoken that much over the last five years. But because he visited me in April, we started talking a couple times a week, almost every week. And there was a point where, you know, I'm not going to say that we got along amazingly all the time, but out of our family, my brother and I understood each other the most. Our characters are similar. We have similar points of views, principles. And I remember even telling him that should he ever meet you, Chris, that I think you two would get along like a house on fire. And. Except maybe you wouldn't. You would probably have a hard time with his tendency to cut people off while talking. But that wasn't always the case. But similar worldviews, I think, is a very important thing. And most of us, when we choose our friends, we don't really think about that in terms of compatibility. Can I really trust this person? Will this person make the same kind of decisions? And will they understand the decision that I would make in these circumstances, even if it's different from their decision? Most of us choose friendships based on proximity. It's just whoever was around at certain points or periods of our life. And for a long time, I thought that was me and my brother. I thought he was just my brother, and that's why I loved him. And so this visit in April was really interesting because it was the first time that I think we really saw each other as people. Like, we really saw who the other person was. And it was. It was a little bit shocking, but also really illuminating. I told him that I had received a diagnosis of adhd and autism. He was surprised. And then I told him that I thought he was very likely autistic as well. He didn't take that news very well, as you can imagine. He definitely had a lot of the traits that I think made it pretty obvious in my mind anyway, but there were so many things. So it was like a very intense catch up of everything going on in our lives in that visit. He didn't even realize that I had published the affirmation deck. He didn't know that I had a social media presence. He didn't know anything of what had been going on on my end and similar vice versa. And I remember he like, as he sort of saw my life like unfolding in front of him and I showed him my Instagram, I showed him my TikToks, I showed him the affirmation deck and I remember he had tears in his eyes, he was actually crying and he told me how proud of me he was. So at least I get to go forward in my life knowing that despite everything else, we had these moments of connection. And in turn he also told me of certain periods of his life that I had never known about because there was, there's a significant age gap between us, almost 10 years, I believe. There were things he had never told me, maybe because it just wasn't the right time, but also not age appropriate. Perhaps you generally don't trauma dump on your 15 year old sister that you had tried to commit suicide. And so there were many parts of his life that came forth now and I am so grateful that even he felt that he could trust me enough to share these things with me and at least that I was able to take that in and really see who he was.

[A]

I'm glad you guys got that opportunity. Let me ask you this bigger question, which is you're telling a very personal story about your relationship with your brother, with your parents, that was less than ideal. There was some abuse there and just I think in the west we would call that emotional and physical abuse, but in the east it'd just be called growing up because that's just normal. So this is a clash of cultures and when we're raised in this, we don't even know it's super toxic. It's very stifling. You don't get to figure out what your dreams, your hopes, your fears are because someone's going to tell you what your hopes, your dreams and your fears should be. And it's a long process of washing away the control and the feeling that you want to please them. We would joke about this and we'd call it ancient Asian mind control techniques that are passed on from parent to parent for many, many years. And they had this tight grip on us. And I can see that even though you're aware of some of these things, that we're still reliving old patterns. You still want to make them happy, you're still looking out for them. Boundaries are hard to establish, but I can see that in our conversations that you've been making strides and saying, hey, that's not cool. I think there was a recent flare up that you got through, but you're starting to exert yourself and saying, okay, my voice matters, I matter, and I'm going to live my life. So where do we go with the story of grieving, and what is it that you hope to accomplish by having this conversation with me or retelling this?

[B]

There are a handful of things. So number one on the logistics side is if you don't have your stuff in place, by stuff, I mean your will or trust. But yet you want to understand that the hardest parts of this process, when someone is dying, really fall outside of any legal instrument there is. It goes far beyond how will you allocate your assets, who gets what. To me, that doesn't even matter, because what happened in my brother's case is because of the estrangement you might face. A situation like I did, where if you are the only person that the other person was in contact with, it's almost a very heavy burden and honor that falls on your shoulders to be the one who speaks up for them, especially when they're in a position where they cannot speak for themselves. So that's the first thing, is that I would like to share some awareness and just have everybody think about if it's your time and somehow, God forbid, you end up in a similar situation. How would you like this scenario to unfold? And who are the people you trust most in life that you can empower to make decisions on your behalf? My brother, he didn't have any of these things in place because obviously he wasn't thinking he was going to have a stroke while he was driving one day. Now, number two, in our family, we have a history of high blood pressure and heart problems on my dad's side. So one might say, if you know that there are certain risk factors that kind of run in your genetics, the responsible thing to do is to go to the doctor and get those health checkups. Now, the thing that I've seen over and over in my family is the Men, which is not unique to my family, but men globally tend to ignore their health. And I think you're a little bit unusual here because you seem very health conscious. My family, not so much. My dad had atrial fibrillation for years, and part of this is just medical incompetence. We tried to tell his doctor many times, and the doctors just chalked it up to acid reflux. And I thought maybe this is a language barrier. So I go to the doctor with my dad, and I find myself dismissed just as much. Now, I'm sure part of that could be due to being a person of color. You know, it's well documented that in the United States that being a minority, your voice tends to be dismissed far more than if you're a white person, a white male. And medical issues. And you might think that's strange, like, how can they ignore facts? Well, I'll just tell you straight up. They do. They really do. Because we are all people at the end of the day. So that's the one thing you have to really keep in mind. Now, the third thing, which I think made all of this more complex, on top of the awkward family dynamics, people wanting to say their peace, whether appropriate or not, my brother became an organ donor. And that is a whole part of the process that I think if you're not ready for this, you should really be aware of what this entails, whether you're the organ donor or whether somebody else in your family has opted in for organ donation. And people do not know this, but organ donation is incredibly rare. We're talking only three in 1,000 people become an organ donor. So there are certain facts and procedure around that process. And then lastly, there are certain medical facts that I think you see it hinted at or alluded to in TV or the movies. You see somebody depicted on their deathbed or in a coma, and the loved ones are encouraged to read to them or to talk to them. And the doctors will say, you never know, they might be able to hear you. And it's not a might. Like, it really isn't. It's almost a guarantee that they can hear you, that some part of them not only hears, but processes and understands what's going on around them. Which for me, dramatically shifted my perspective on this idea that you unload all your stuff on this person who is essentially an unwilling hostage. So I think those are the main four pieces I would like to give, get into. What do you think?

[A]

So what you're saying is life is unpredictable. If you care about anybody that's around you, whoever may survive you in a timely or timely death, you need to get some stuff together because you're punting lots of decisions down the field and it's an incredible burden for anybody who loves you and cares about you. And then everybody's got an opinion about something at that point in this case, because I don't think it's been said on the show yet. Your brother had a stroke. He pulled over on the side of the road and it was hours before somebody discovered him and then got him to a hospital. So by the time he got to the hospital, he was already in a coma. He was brain dead at that point. And so his body's alive, but he's non responsive. And so then the family has to come in and figure out what to do. And this is usually in the best of times a very difficult thing. And in the worst of times, families arguing and not in agreement and not being very kind to the person who's on the line, whose life is literally on the line and things need to be decided and your brother is an organ donor, as am I. But when you're alive still and you're not in a car accident, lots of questions come up. Do we end the life to save the organs? Do we let him die and then try to pull the organs out? There's a lot of weird questions that come up. Now I will say this. When I was much younger, probably in my early to mid-30s, before we were having our children, we started talking about these things already. So by the time we had our first child, college tuition fund had been set up, a living trust and will had been set up, our last wishes and power. Attorneys already been assigned and there's chain because when you work with an attorney, they're like, okay, so what happens if that person's incapable or dead? Who's the next person? Who's the next person? So it brought up lots of questions about who you really trust to raise your children, how you want money to be spent or not spent and what's going to happen. Now. One thing we learned in the session here is they said that the reason why a lot of times attorneys, the ones who draft the document are named as power of attorney or I forget what's the name of it, they manage the estate on the behalf of the dead.

[B]

An executor.

[A]

An executor winds up being the attorney because they can trust no family members. And I thought, wow, that's freaking sad. Like no one in your family. But as we went through that, I'm like, okay, this person might do this, this person might do that. I'm like, you want this objective person who's going to do the best job of executing your last will. This is really important. So it's something for people to talk about. The thing I always try to tell people is like, you got to plan for the worst and hope for the best, but people don't do the planning for the worst. And so when things don't fall according to plan, things fall apart and they fall apart quickly. So we know we need to do certain adult things. I remember after we signed this document, the attorney said to us with a smile on his face, congratulations on being an adult. And it felt great. So to this day I know it's a very macabre thought. When I get on a plane, I'm not sure that the plane will land and that I will survive this trip. There's lots of things that can take you out without a notice. But I always travel with lightness because I've taken care of my affairs. I have insurance policies against my death for lots of different things that will take care of my wife and my children. Our state is in order. Sometimes we joke they're better off with me dead than alive. And they're like, don't ever say that. But it's like, I've handled my business, everyone's set up. We know who needs to be taken care of, we know how the money's going to be distributed and we make sure that there's enough surviving people in case a lot of people get wiped out. That someone will look after my children. It's mostly my biggest concern. So we're probably the opposite here, your brother and I, in this regard. He was a little bit more carefree, a little bit more risk tolerant than myself, or just living free spirited, shall I say. And so unfortunately, that puts you in a very difficult position without clear assignment of roles to say, I know what he wants, I'm going to take over, so why don't I pause, throw it back over to you.

[B]

Yeah, you're absolutely right. He had a certain level of carefreeness. But I would say despite being almost the same age as you, it's almost like he was still finding his foothold in this world. He was still establishing himself, he was still trying to make it. And unfortunately, I think he didn't quite get there, at least not in terms of monetary gains. But the thing that is really unique about my brother is that he spent most of his life trying to support others. So when we're talking about boundaries I think it's important to understand that boundaries aren't just about other people, but you need to understand boundaries with yourself. And if you spend your entire life in service of others and trying to support them, I mean, literally almost every woman he was with, he was supporting them financially. They were fully dependent on him. He also had five children. And it breaks my heart to say that when he left this world, he had a two year old daughter. And I question every day, how much of him will she remember. So we're talking about these things. When you made that comment about if you don't have your affairs in order and you sort of create this burden upon the people you leave behind, it's not just the burden of the work itself. I find in my instance, it's actually far the opposite. Settling his estate and trying to put things into order for him has actually been a little cathartic for me because I find it is a final way for me to express my love and to try and honor him. Now, I would say the part where the burden happens is because we never had these conversations. When you end up in this kind of situation, all you desperately want to do is to honor their wishes. But what do you do when you actually don't know what those wishes are? So you're left to guess your way through this maze, legally, medically, all of it. And that's what starts to really tear at you, like this uncertainty. Now when you introduce family into the picture as well, and family is not in agreement, which happened with us. So earlier I mentioned that Asian society is very hierarchical, right? That automatically means that the oldest children will be the ones in charge of this process. So he and I are the two younger siblings versus our two older siblings. And I saw my parents sort of take my two older siblings aside and say, hey, this is yours to handle. And I remember watching them and I was like, but why? Like, why would you do that when everybody in our family knows that I was closest to him? If there's a shot in hell of getting any part of his wishes right, it would be me, because I knew him as a person. And maybe I don't know the exact decisions he would make, but I would probably have the best chance at guessing correctly. So even there we had this conflict over organ donation. So what happened with my brother is that he renewed his driver's license this year. So in 2025, on the driver's license he had before this one, he was opted in as an organ donor. But on this driver's license, he no longer had that Checkbox ticked. And that created some turmoil within our family. And what I could see happening in my family is that most of our family wanted him to be an organ donor, but they were thinking of it from their perspective. It was for their peace of mind. It was for their comfort to know that some part of him would live on in others. I don't know that they were actually considering it from his perspective, as in, is this what he really wanted? The fact that he opted out this year, was that intentional or was that a mistake? And so that was a deal with us. I think I expressed the strongest reservations about this. But in the end, you know, I spoke to my husband, who was also there with us, and I just considered who my brother was holistically and in life. I think every sign that I saw of the choices he made did point to this is probably what he would have wanted. So then we went down this road, and here's a little bit of a non sequitur here, because you mentioned he was driving and he had a stroke. So just a quick tip for anybody listening, please set up emergency contacts on your phone. I don't know a single person these days, unless they're children, who does not have a smartphone. If you have a smartphone, set up emergency contacts. That is a feature in iPhones, in Android phones, all of them. And then set up location sharing with the people you've designated as emergency contacts. And I would say set up location sharing even with people who aren't, just to make sure that people know where you are, because you don't want. What happened to my brother when this happened to him. He was driving when the stroke hit. He was able to pull over, and he called a friend. And of course, I'm thinking, why did. Did you not call 911? He called a friend, and this friend, unfortunately, was sleeping, so he did not answer. I don't know how long my brother retained his wits about him, but he slipped into unconsciousness. So that's one of the alternate realities I have tortured myself with, is if he had just had emergency contacts turned on and he had activated that feature. So, again, make sure you know your phone or your Apple Watch, whatever it is, make sure you not only set up emergency contacts, but know how to activate that feature and what that does, like know what that does. So that's one of those things where I keep thinking, if only he had done this, and maybe he wouldn't have spent three hours in the car by himself. Because the kind of stroke he had was because he had a condition where Blood vessels burst. Three hours is a long time when you have a stroke. Time is of the essence. And because he spent three hours, he had suffered massive internal bleeding, which then cause brain injury. Now the other parts that you mentioned, you have your affairs in order. I find that the stuff that I'm learning and I've checked with my friends, they don't know this. For instance, if you're employed in a 9 to 5 and you have life insurance, what you may not know is that as soon as you end employment, you lose that life insurance. That is how most of these life insurance through your employer are set up. As soon as you stop working for them, the life insurance policy goes away. Now you're self employed, so I'm assuming you have something that you've set up independently. Most people are never going to do that because they just don't know. The other thing that I find that most people don't know is when you have accounts, and I'm talking cash accounts. So your bank accounts, your 401k, your Roth, all of it, you have the ability to set beneficiaries and you can do that fairly easily. You don't need a lawyer. What this does is it will tell these accounts to go to these certain people upon your death and it will bypass the whole probate process in the us Meaning you don't have to spend months and months with your assets tied up in court for the people to then inherit what you want them to have from your end. I don't think my brother had this. This is where when someone dies intestate like he did, intestate, meaning without a will, it becomes a lot more complex because then you have to petition and say you're next of kin. You have to say that we are even trying to investigate what all assets are in place. What does he even have? And right now I don't even fully know. I have some idea. But that's what then creates a lot of legwork. You have to go and try and figure out. And people often don't get this right on the first go round. My lawyer told me that it's very common for people to go through the whole probate process to think it's all done, but then for maybe over the next five or even 10 years, things should just randomly pop up because you didn't even know these things existed. So try and be organized. Write down all the accounts you have, and I don't mean even just financial or something with property. Like literally write down all the online access accounts you have, every single Thing. Make sure that your username, your login, all of that is stored somewhere and that somebody knows where that is.

[A]

What are the things that you leave behind when your physical self is no longer here? I'd like to ask you that question, but I'm going to answer it first. Okay. I have a fairly finite view on this, where I don't think there's an afterlife. I don't think we're part of some collective pool of energy. Then our energy gets recycled, what you may call a soul. I believe we live, we die, just like all the animals on this planet, that we're not any more special than them. And when that deer dies or the turtle dies, it's just dead and it turns into carbon and some of the nutrients get released back to the soil or the ocean, and that's it. So when I'm dead, it won't really matter what I leave behind. I'm not so concerned about what's left behind, the legacy, the story, the narrative, or the package at all. I'm very much concerned with what I'm doing in the present. And I tell my wife when we talk about this from time to time, and my children, and I say to them, when I'm dead, I want there to be no funeral. I don't want there to be any crying. You guys have a party and you guys celebrate your lives and you just move on. Because if there is an afterlife, what would break my heart the most is to see you guys grieving and in pain. So whatever you all need to do to get closure so you can move on with your life and know that this is my philosophy, that I'm gone and it's done. Please just move on. And I very explicitly tell my wife, you cannot live this life alone. You do need to remarry. Just pick a good man who's going to be kind to you, who's going to look after you, and who has a generous heart to look after our children. That matters a lot to me. You won't have concern for money, so you won't have to rush into any decision. Just be careful. There are people who are opportunists and who will look to perhaps wrestle that away from you. And whatever I've built and whatever I've made, I made it for the three of you. That's all that matters to me. So use all that for whatever you want. Doesn't matter. Live your best life. Be free of everything. That is the best gift that I can give. And to think 0% of where I may or may not be. That's what I want to leave behind, because I'm gone. What do you want to leave behind? Jewelry or do you want to say something first?

[B]

It's interesting listening to you, because we didn't have a funeral for my brother. But unlike you, he was very concerned about the idea of leaving a legacy. And he has five children, so that's one dimension of that. But he wanted to leave a legacy, a mark upon the world of something having changed our family through financial means of being known in some way. Not like how you and I want to be famous and to teach people in massive audiences. Not like that. But he just wanted to know that he helped people, the people in his inner circle, that he helped them and that he lifted them up. So the idea of a legacy was very important to him. And I struggled with this whole thing. We didn't have a funeral. We didn't have any kind of memorial service. We had nothing. And I come to realize you don't have these rituals for the person who's no longer here. You have them for the people who remain so that they can have closure. And so throughout most of human life, we've had major rituals to symbolize transitions. Whether it's the harvest, whether it's coming of age into adulthood, maybe it's having children. Whatever it is, there are rituals for a reason. And I'm starting to understand that it helps your mind move on to that next phase. And without that, it can be very difficult. So, as you can imagine me being the information hoarder that I am, I've been reading some books on grief because there are days where I seem totally fine and people would never know that I've been going through this. And then there are days where. Like today, where I was coming back from Costco and I just start crying in the car for no reason. And I know that you said that if there is some kind of afterlife, that it would break your heart to see your loved ones grieving and in pain. And I think there's just no way around that. It's like, obviously I don't think my brother would want to see us grieving and in pain, but I just don't think there's any way around that. Biologically, there is a process for a reason. And in one of the books that I'm reading on grief is called the Grieving Brain, it talks about why this is so painful to us. And it's because the brain, I guess, has almost a sort of inertia. If you tell the brain something that opposes what it knows to be true. It doesn't take it in the first time. It doesn't take it in the first five or even a dozen times. It takes a while. And so in this instance we're talking about in your life, this person has existed in space and time. They've occupied this physical space, and they've. You've known them for this many years, and you've had this relationship with them. And to your brain, that is the truth, that is reality. And so when they're no longer there, suddenly the brain struggles to sort of catch up, I suppose. And this is where the part of the book really resonated with me, because I find myself every day, multiple times a day, almost talking to my brother in my mind. And the two questions I keep asking in my mind are, where are you? And I hope you're okay. Like, where are you? And what are you feeling? What are you doing? Some version of that. And so the book explains that that is a natural part of how our brains cope with this process. It takes us a long time to update the context that this person no longer exists in our physical reality. So intellectually, we grasp that they're no longer here with us, but emotionally we don't. And I think that's part of what makes this incredibly difficult for us.

[A]

At the risk of getting into a philosophical conversation about what this is all about, I'm going to go there with you, okay? Because you say there's a delay of reality and emotional reality. But I asked this question. If your brother went on a trip and he's going to go to remote places in the world and can't call you, and you're going to be totally okay with that, just knowing that he went on a trip? I mean, there are, like, people come in and out of our lives all the time. And there may be gaps between your relationships. Where you went to college, like you said, when you reconnected recently, he had not known anything about you, and you guys got to connect again with, which is great. But for the periods in which you weren't connected, whether that be a month, a week, a year, or many years, we just assume they're okay, that they're living their lives, they're living their best lives, as we all should try to live our best lives. And if you can just imagine that when you don't have any information, then the question is, can you imagine that he's living his best life now because we don't have any more information? You ask two questions which are unknowable. Where are you and. Are you okay? He is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. He's full and he's empty at the same time. And I am of the belief that when we tell ourselves it's going to take a long time, it will just take exactly that long. If we say we'll never get over this, we'll never get over this. If we're like. Like with my grandmother, who I love dearly, she's one of my favorite people in the world and everyone was so sad, but I just looked at it like I got to appreciate this woman for so many years and to be so close to her. And she and I, we had a very special relationship in that I think she cared deeply for me and this is gonna hurt some of my cousins, but she favored me over many of my cousins who were dying for affection and her attention. And I celebrate her life fully. And when I saw her body in the casket and I actually read, I was elected to read on behalf of our family. My Nami dad was a wreck. He was, he was very broken up over this, but I was like, I'm good, grandma. You're. If there's an afterlife, you've done everything you can to secure your spot. I do not believe in an afterlife. So I think you, you, you're good. I look around this room. There are many children who survived you and many grandchildren and great grandchildren. And this room is filled because of you. And we will live. And as long as we live and you live in our memory, we're all good. I don't think I would miss her anymore because I just kept thinking at some point when you get that old, you're not really living anymore. You're kind of just like forms of suffering. And so I'm appreciative of that. She's able to transition into another state, whatever state that is. I just want to be clear, everybody. When I say another state, I don't mean like an energy state, a soulful state. I'm just from living to non living and there's nothing that I wanted to say left. Like we, we had a great time together. I'm good. It's like every, every book has an ending, every movie should end, every life ends. They said there's only two guarantees in life, death and taxes. And we would like it to be longer. But at some point, it's not good anymore. And my wife and I, we have a bargain. As soon as I'm not functioning cognitively, pull the plug asap. Don't hold out for some miracle. I'm done. We're very clear. It's super explicit. And we say we trust each other to do this so that we're not prolonging this. So maybe I'm ultra pragmatic about this, but I assume your brother's okay. I assume he's gone. And he would want you to do everything in your power to live your life to the fullest for however many limited days we have. It's one of the reasons why, like, every time I get on a plane, I text my mom, I text my wife and the kids. I say, I love you, I'm leaving. I'll let you know when I land because I want to make sure that the last words they ever hear or see from me is how I feel about them. And that's it. So, you know, like when the plane is. The engine blows up and you're hurtling towards the earth, I'm like, I'm good. And I see everyone clenching so tightly to their armrests when there's turbulence and there's a drop, I don't know what they're thinking. And I always turn to them, like, if we're going to die, do you know how to fly this plane? Can you survive in the ocean post impact? Would you want to survive in the ocean post impact? And you're worrying about things you have no control over. So I say surrender, accept what's going to happen, because whatever is going to happen has already happened. And I think it's that fight against that that creates so much suffering, anxiety and sadness and everything else that we feel is not good. Your brother, despite him wanting to make an impact and do all that stuff, his what little I know, it seems incongruous with his actions. So it's like he lived, he's gone. The family, the survivors will have to pull together to live without him. And they will. People are extremely resilient. They'll need help, they'll need love, they'll need friendship and kindness and generosity.

[B]

Well, let's address some of the stuff that you've brought up in the order that you brought them up. So, number one, I actually do agree where you said, if you tell yourself that it's going to take longer than it will take exactly that time. I'm not sitting here trying to tell myself that I'm going to mourn my brother, at least not actively mourn. I'm sure there's always going to be a part of me that does. But if we're talking about grief, I think this is where a lot of people get into hot water with people who are in the grieving process because you'll have people who lack awareness, and they're like, it's been a year. Aren't you done grieving? And of course, the other person's like, stfu.

[A]

You go through whatever process you need to go through. It's not on anybody's timetable.

[B]

Yeah, I think with me, it was a little bit difficult because we're in the hospital in San Diego. By the time I see my brother, he's in a coma. He's not fully brain dead at that point. There is activity and his reflexes are there. And then there are certain signs that I see during that point where, like, whoa. The nurse, like, what? She tells us there was this one day when he had a lot of visitors, and the nurse told us the next day that his blood pressure was a lot higher that previous day. And I remember there were moments of just. It was questioning. So if we revisit the idea of them being able to hear you, I have seen signs that they can. So I don't know. For me, it feels like the grieving process has been start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. Because of the circumstances that I've gone through over July, you know, first it was being with my family. Many, you know, my siblings I hadn't seen in 10 years. So there's that awkwardness and then feeling unsafe to just really feel grief. So there was a part of me that was holding back. Every day I'd be in the hospital room and I would feel immense emotion, but it wouldn't come out until I was back in my hotel room that night. And then my poor husband has to deal with this sobbing wreck every night. I'm barely sleeping and he's exhausted. It's not easy to be there for someone during this kind of period. So I think I'm sort of coming off like a delayed wave now because after that, I come home and then my parents come and spend over a week with me. And so when we're again talking about the family dynamics, us not being on the same page as to who my brother was as a person again, not feeling like I had the room or the space to really feel what I felt, I don't know how long I hope to God that I'm not going to continue feeling this way every single day. I don't love this feeling, but here's what I have seen in some of my friends, too. And I can almost catch myself, like, on the precipice of about to do the same thing and have to keep reeling myself back. I have noticed that some of the people I've coached or people I know, it's almost like having an open wound, and just as it starts to scab over, you pull off the scab and you keep poking at it again. And I believe that a lot of people will mistakenly think that that is what they have to do in order to keep this person's memory alive. They know that they should move on, but they don't want to, because in their mind, emotionally, they feel that to move on is to then leave that person behind. So I think it's these two things together that really keep us in the thrall of grief and being unable to actually let go.

[A]

I think about the reason why you have wave emotions as pretty reasonable and logical relative to what you're doing, because, first of all, I feel great empathy and sadness for your parents, because no parent should outlive their children. I would be a disaster if my children died. I really would be, because that's not the order of things. Quote, unquote. I'm okay with everyone else older than me dying. I'm okay with dying myself. I'm okay with my wife dying. Because we're all relatively old now. It's not until the last hundred years that we could even live this long. Right? The average age of a man and woman surviving to a certain point is pretty low already. Today, I'm living twice as long as people had lived in the past. Now, the reason, perhaps why I would suspect you're feeling what you're feeling is because you had to be the adult. Once again, you have to parent yourself, because no parent is stepping up, and your siblings don't step up. And so you're like, okay, guys, I'm gonna hit pause on what I'm dealing with right now, and I'm gonna do what's right. So you rise to that challenge, and you help sort out the affairs to make sure whatever has to happen, from Ms. Estate to his widow or his children. So you kind of just put the pause button and all that you want to feel, and it's. That sucks. There's a part for me that my heart aches for, that. That part of you that says, I can't even process because I got to take care of stuff. And this could be a combination, lots of things. Because in my world, I'm like, y', all, I'm not dealing with this. It's not my thing. But you're a very dutiful child. You're looking after everyone and caretaking and all that stuff. And you step up and you deal with this. And so that pause on your emotion builds up a dam of emotions, and then you cannot now release it because it'll flood your. Your body and your system. You're supposed to be able to let it out as it has happened so it doesn't build up. And then you go through the ceremony and the rituals of letting someone go so that your body, your mind are in sync. And you guys don't do that. And so now you're dealing with the waves of whatever feelings metered out the way in. In amounts that you can process without frying your entire system. I think that's probably what's happening. And playing amateur psychologists here. I don't know anything about this, but I'm just trying to understand the woman who's had to deal with this and deal with her brother's affairs when she shouldn't have to. I mean, again, I think the intention behind an episode like this is to let everybody know there are people that you're going to leave behind in most cases, not all cases, because some people have no family. Like their family members are alive, but they don't consider them family. So they don't care that you're going to have to take care of this stuff and don't leave it up to them because you're creating hurt in ways that you don't intend to. So look after the people and take care of your business. I think that's just the biggest thing. Again, I tell my wife and we talk about this. What does it mean to be not responsive means if I cannot survive without the machinery, I'm not here. It's just all this artificial things that are keeping me alive right now. And yeah, there's forms of life and responses, but that's not living. If I hit the ocean in a plane, like, just take me out clean, don't let me sit there in the freezing water and have hypothermia. And then a shark bites my leg. I'm like, that's not living. I'm good. Let me go. So that's my take on it. And the idea of not letting go of the pain, I think sometimes, as you mentioned, falls into either guilt or shame. That's why I give everyone explicit permission. I almost need to make a video with very specific instructions as to if you're watching this video, it means I'm not here anymore. And here's what we want to do. I love you all. Have a great life, please. And do whatever, say whatever. I need so that everyone can be cool.

[B]

That's actually one of the things that I'm trying to put together in this guide that I'm creating for how to deal with any of this. A little bit different from what you said, but yeah, it's essentially in the day and age that we live in now, there's almost no excuse for you to not make this kind of message, whether it's a video or audio only, but something. Because what's a little bit unique here is my brother's girlfriend. She has sent me so many videos and pictures from his time with her and I'm so incredibly grateful because without these things, that entire part of his life would just be a black box to me. So going back to what you said, when your person goes on a trip somewhere, especially if they don't have any Internet or no connectivity, maybe you don't worry. But I actually worry when people I know, they go into somewhere remote. I do actually worry about them. So there is this level of connection and just knowing that I can't get to them and hopefully they'll be okay. So I'm not a disaster thinker, but there's like maybe like a 1 or 2% piece of my mind that's just. Just sort of on alert a little bit.

[A]

But what could you do? I don't like that emotional worry. I've edited out of my life as much as I can. If I can do something, do it. If you can't remove it, I don't.

[B]

Know that there is much to do other than take preparation measures. So if I know that this person has gone off to Tahiti like I did and they don't have Internet, but maybe I know that they have access to email once a day. And I know I'm going to be checking my email just in case. So if I know that somebody is going somewhere like that, I want to make sure that they know how to get a hold of me and me vice versa. I know what channels to pay attention to.

[A]

Yeah. And you do this on their behalf or at their request?

[B]

It depends on who it is. So if it's my parents, I'm going to be a lot more like overbearing. Let's say if it's my friends, it'll be at their request and occasionally I'll just check in with them because if I know they have children, then I'll be like, hey, so you set this up right? Just for peace of mind.

[A]

I guess that's how we're so fundamentally different in this one regard. When I travel I guess we have a pre established protocol with my wife. I don't call her, she doesn't call me. It's all good. Usually if I'm calling, there's a problem, even if I miss her. I don't, don't do these calls because it's not helpful to anybody. I'm dealing with contractors. There's three people over here and you're trying to call me right now? Like, is this now a good time? Is this an emergency? And like, no, it's not. So we don't do that to each other. I might text her something and saying, I'm thinking about you, just so she knows that. Not outside out of mind kind of thing, but if I don't care about my well being. This is like some weird friend hovering kind of concept, you know, like, if I die, I die. I die to good death. And my wife talked about this because we went fishing. I said there's not a 0% chance I'll die, but there's not a high probability I'll die. And these are risks that we take. And if I die fishing or doing the things that I love, if I have a stroke on stage, when I'm doing a talk that I love and feel good about, so be it. I would rather do that than sit in a cubicle pushing paperwork, doing accounting or something. Or some things that I'm not very good at. Like, oh, that's how I died. I want to die laughing, living full of light, with intentionality. And like I said, if I have him kidnapped, I'm kidnapped. I mean, if I try to reach you and you never make an attempt to get back to me, that'd be pretty devastating. But then I picked my friends poorly. But I don't know what worrying does. It actually shortens your life, I think. Is it cortisol? Is that the stress hormone? Cortisol is like in your system. You put on weight, you age more quickly, all kinds of bad things happen. So why would we do that? I don't know.

[B]

I'm not saying to actively be a worrywart, okay? We both know people like that. I'm just saying just maybe take some precautions in place.

[A]

But if they don't want to, they're reckless and careless. Let them be reckless and careless. So I think this is an interesting dynamic where maybe this is where opposites kind of complement each other. I don't want to say a trap because this is like a sibling thing where. Or parental thing. If someone's really careless, then the other person feels the need, the burden to be more protective and more careful like you do you. All is good if you want to worry, you do you. But logically, it doesn't make any sense.

[B]

I think this goes beyond just that person being reckless or careless, though. If you look at my brother, a lot of my family would definitely label him as such. But now look at us. Because of the choices he's made in his life, we are impacted by the pain we feel for him. So there is a part of me that thinks, yeah, I'm not your keeper. I'm not responsible for you. But if I just give you a reminder and it actually makes a difference, who. Who does it hurt? No, I'm not going to sit there worrying about you, Chris, or somebody else. The only people I really worry about are my parents and my husband.

[A]

So let me ask you this question. In a crazy world, your brother passes and you don't take on this responsibility. It's like, man, I didn't make this mess. And if in traditional hierarchical society, your oldest sibling gets it and they don't want to deal with it, you just don't deal with it. Affairs smears. You're just, I'm gone. I'll go back to my life. I'm going to recall the fond memories and just allow that to play. How does that impact things? What do you think happens?

[B]

There's a small part of me that's ashamed to admit that I actually did consider that.

[A]

Why is there shame attached to that?

[B]

Because I just don't think that's worthy of what he deserved. He deserved to have people who demonstrated that they cared for him.

[A]

And you did.

[B]

It's not the same, though, because the thing that really, I think, sealed the deal for me, and I think I even called you as things were unfolding more than a month ago, and I said I was good. I was, you know, I've made my peace. I know where he and I stand. You said this one statement that has just. I haven't been able to let this go ever since.

[A]

Holy crap.

[B]

You said you have done everything possible. You've done everything possible you can for him. And that has just been sitting on my mind ever since because I questioned that. I was like, but did I? I don't know that I, in all honesty and fairness, can say I did. I did a lot. Maybe let's say I did like 70% of the way. But did I do every single thing I could? I don't think so. And honestly, I just don't know that anybody out there can say they did 100% of everything they possibly could for somebody else.

[A]

The measure of everything possible can't be against 100% because no one will do 100%. Then we're all failures. Then we all should be ashamed of ourselves. But when we talk about. When I say that is you've done everything possible, it means you went way above and beyond what a normal person would have done. You went way above and beyond what I would have done. And I like to think of myself as a pretty fair and balanced person. I don't want to get into the details, but, you know, the things you did that I. I don't think you should do that. And you're like, I'm gonna do it. I'm like, okay. And then the things that happen, I'm like, I wouldn't do that. But, yeah, I already did it. I'm like, fudge. You see what I'm saying? When I say everything possible, it's like, man, you gave so much rope on that situation, on a person that may or may not have earned that from you, and you put yourself in a little bit of hot water yourself, and you strained your own relationships. That's a lot, man. That is a lot. And I say that not as some platitude. I try to be more intentional with my words. Right? Like, you've done everything possible, not against 100%, but above what the median is. You're way above and beyond. I would have cut you off, like, three steps earlier myself, but I didn't know. I'm like, oh, my gosh.

[B]

There's a snarky part of me that says, when you first started talking, I was like, oh, so we're in the business of, you know, being like normal people. I was like, chris, what happened to excellence?

[A]

This is excellent. Way above normal. Above and beyond normal.

[B]

I think that's the struggle, though, is, let's say in this current context that you're referencing. I did what I could, for sure. But the part that really hurts is when I've looked through our past messages and to realize I've been the person who's often with my avoidant attachment style, where sometimes I just couldn't always be there for him with my presence when he was going through the roughest, the darkest, the dark times. He was that person where it often felt like there was a rain cloud constantly over his head, just chasing him wherever he went. And maybe, one could argue that was through some of his own choices, for sure, but not all of that was from his choices. He didn't ask for his car to get stolen multiple times. Honestly, he's had the hardest life of everybody I knew. And that's the part that I think I'm struggling, is when we say, have you done everything you can? And the logical part of my brain says, well, yes, because otherwise you would have done it. But the other side of me, that's the regret we're talking about. And the guilt and the shame is if I could have a do over, I would definitely do those periods of our life over. And that is why I wrote what I wrote on LinkedIn.

[A]

But we don't get do overs, Joel. The past is an imagination and so is the future. All we have is right now. If we had do overs, I would think you would do much bigger do oversight. Much, much bigger do overs. So we wouldn't just start here. This is just drawing our focus into this moment in this incident. Here's where I kind of struggle a little bit. No one grows up with perfect parents because we're raised by imperfect people. They did the best they can with what they had and how they knew how to do it. And it got us to this point. And this point being when you become a fully realized adult, when you have your own autonomy, somewhere after college, I think. I think those decisions, the shift of blame and responsibility, start to move towards you. And I know we can do this in the Freudian way where we keep saying cause causality, because you did this, I became that because you drank. I don't drink because you drank. I drink a lot. We get into all that stuff. But at some point you have to say, I have to be accountable for my actions. I really do. And like, neurochemically, biologically, we could be wired with certain things that we have, certain tendencies and proclivities, and still we have to take responsibility because nothing else improves anything. And whether it's your brother or someone else, everybody makes their decisions and they get to reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of what decisions they made. And I have no more power, no more influence, and no more responsibility in those decisions than they do. Just like I'm trying with the best to be responsible to myself. Now, when I say, and I'm glad you brought this up, because you're giving me new angles to think about. Now. We strive for excellence. We are never trying to be normal or average. And that's for us. That's for us, not for other people, by the way. And I want every single person to know this. Do everything you can in your power to help other people along the way without doing harm. To yourself. That's a critical part. Do everything in your power to help other people along the way without doing harm to yourself, so you can't do the other and violate the second. If helping people drives you into the poor house, gets you divorced, gets you alienated from your parents, gets you kicked out of your church and your community, that is clearly while doing harm to yourself. And it's said in that order. But really, not doing harm to yourself is the priority because you can't help people when you yourself are broken. And so we talk about this. Let's just make it, like, real. I hate to take it here, but I'm going to risk doing it and saying, if you had, let's just say, a thriving business where you have so much fricking money, you're like, you know what? I want to help my brother's family out. He didn't get his financial things in order, his five surviving children and his ex. I'm going to help them all. And I could do that. But, like, if we're all sitting here like, oh, God, I'm trying to help this. I'm helping my mom, and it's like, now I can't help anybody because I'm barely holding on myself emotionally, physically, financially, spiritually, without doing harm to ourselves. Jewel, because you got to take care of yourself. I'm an advocate for you, being a champion for yourself first, that you have to be the parent to yourself that you did not have. Otherwise you'll be stuck in that place you've always been. Would the loving, caring, benevolent, generous, kind parent tell you to do some of the things you're doing now? And if you can't answer affirmatively, then you have to kind of think, why am I doing this to myself?

[B]

I don't know, man. That's really tough. I could feel myself tearing up listening to you. And I know, as my friend, that you've said this to me more than once. I think that's where my brain is stuck between what I know to be true and yet what I don't want to be true. And I struggle between thinking that if I had done something differently. All I can say is that the only way I've been able to navigate myself through this has been acceptance. And I've tried my best to accept that. I know that the person my brother is. Was. He wouldn't want to see me like this, and I know that. And I know that you have to take care of yourself first. And you have to have almost a ruthless grasp of that concept, no matter how Much in need somebody else is. And so even as you were talking with you saying, do everything you can to help without doing harm to yourself. And I think what I see in a lot of people is that the border of where you think harm to yourself is is not always where you think it is. And I'm not saying this to tell people you should do more. I'm saying because I work with a lot of people pleasers, the threshold is a lot lower than you think it is, but sometimes it goes in the other direction as well. And when it goes in the other direction, where harm to yourself is actually not as bad as you think it is, I see that in the instances of misunderstandings, and I think this is why our families had such a rift. All I can say is this man, it will be one of the biggest regrets of my life for not standing up for him more within our family. And perhaps the conflict with my parents or my other siblings. Not an easy thing by any means. But there's a part of me that questions how can I tell someone else to be stronger when I myself am not demonstrating the same?

[A]

I try to imagine a world where everybody took really good care of themselves, Loved themselves, honored themselves, respected themselves, valued themselves. And so let's just say they didn't take care of anybody else. That their threshold for harm to myself was so high, it was like, well, none of that's going to hurt me. Just imagine every single person like that. Is that such a terrible place? I just want you to really think about that. Jewel took good care of herself. Mom took good care of herself. Dad takes really good care of himself, bro and sister took good care of themselves. No one would need any help. No one would be trying to fix anybody.

[B]

You never have to worry about them.

[A]

You don't worry about them. And the world is a more joyful, prosperous place. Let's go the opposite direction. No one valued themselves, no one loved themselves. And everybody's parenting themselves in ways that are destructive, critical, hurtful. And now we're all like crying for help. So then we're all broken. No one can really help anybody. And you just temporarily help somebody in the kind of, I hate to say it, but like a mediocre, feeble way, that's not really going to change. Like, you give a kid a five dollar bill, it's like that buys me a small lunch. Thank you, but I'm gonna have this problem again in eight hours. And then we're neglecting our own self care, self regulation. And so, like, we're not getting our Life. And I think it's much easier for us to not solve our own problems, to work on ourselves than it is to try and help someone else. Because we don't have attachment there. We're not stuck to our identity and it makes us feel good in the short term. And then we're back to being busted again. Then we ask someone else for help, then they can't get their life together and then they're trying to, you know, it just goes on and on. So if I look at the world in these kind of polarities and I do this mostly from a psychological, philosophical, intellectual level, which is of these two extremes, which would I prefer. It helps me to kind of figure out because it's very messy in the middle. I know that life doesn't work like this. There's spectrums of gray, an infinite shade of gray, and then there's this polarity, black and white. It's like, well, I think I'm good. When everyone's self reliant, self confident, self aware. In fact, that's all I want for my children. So I know that's the kind of world I want. Like I want them to not to need me, want me or anything, that they're fully capable, self realized people who are going to take good care of themselves. And then I slip into the grave very peacefully. So I know your whole thing is that you can help more people, but that's the danger. Everybody is trying to make someone else a project so they can avoid what they need to do. I cannot tell you how many broke entrepreneurs, emotionally broke, financially, spiritually broke, who are trying to help me for whatever reason. Like, I don't need help. I'm good, everybody, I'm really good. Like, yeah, let me help you with this thing that you're not doing right. I appreciate you, but you don't need to do that. I'm good. Take care of yourself and then take care of each other. I think that's the expression in that order.

[B]

Just to set the record straight, I don't think that you should help everyone out there. And oftentimes the help that we offer is just a band aid and we become an enabler in so doing.

[A]

Oftentimes, yeah.

[B]

I think in the case of my family though, when I earlier mentioned when you have a misunderstanding and when you let hard feelings get in the way and you withhold help, or let's say it's not even help, you withhold connection, and that's when things really start to veer off track. So there's a lot of Stuff here, obviously, as I continue to navigate who knows how long with this. But there's something else that you said earlier that I took note of because it is, I think it is what I am experiencing. But also, you know, the hospital social workers were kind enough to pass on these children's books for his children. And I was ready to just crawl out of my skin at that point. I was looking for anything to distract myself, something to focus my mind. So I kind of read the books, I scanned them. There was something that I read that is very close to what you said. So with your emotions building up and especially in the case of grief, we often have to end up sort of measuring out pieces of it so that we don't fall into the abyss, so we don't completely break down so that we're able to continue to function throughout our day and we don't fall into depression or the other potentially life interrupting type of things that we could get into. And that's what ends up happening a lot of the times. But I will also say this is, it's not always within your full control. I think the person I am today, I'm mostly equipped with the tools in order to handle this, to cope with this and to process and to hopefully heal and continue to live my life and honor my brother as best I can. If you had said this happened 10 years ago, I'm afraid to imagine what I would be like back then. Depression does run in my family on both sides and I myself have struggled with that. So I think there was a very real possibility of that happening to me had this happened in my previous life. So again, it's is acceptance and there's no living life without some regrets. You'll always realize there's something different you could have done. You'll feel that bitter sting, you'll wish that things had turned out differently sometimes. And then you have to learn to let those things go. So at the end of the day, it's partially understanding what you have control over what you don't, and just trying your best to ride the wave, to accept that this is what's real and this is what's in front of you and that there's nothing wrong with that.

[A]

Obviously it's a deep and heavy topic that we're talking about, not the usual fare of conversations we have, but I think it's an important one to have. And I just want to say on behalf of everyone listening that if you're going through some dark moments in your life, I want you to know this. The world is better with you in it that whatever's happening with you. I would love for you to get some help if you're feeling these darker thoughts of depression. And in California, I just looked this up. There's something called the Crisis center. And if you dial 988, it is a suicide and crisis lifeline. Please talk to someone. Somebody in the world cares deeply about you and we would all miss you if you were gone. Now, Jewel, I want to say one last thing on this thing. I wonder, for me, I would do this. I don't think it's safe for you to do this, but for me, I would open up the black hole in a safe place and just step into the thousand percent of grieving and just cry my eyes out until nothing is left. That hole, I would pull the hole apart as wide as can be so I can go to the depth and then allow myself to come back up. But that's me. I'm not telling anybody else to do this. Please. Heavy caveat here, because it's like, you know when you're sick sometimes and it's like horrible. You have the fever dream and you're having the hot cold flashes and nothing tastes good like your own saliva. Makes you want to vomit. I remember as a kid when I went to vomit. It's been a long time since I've done that. As horrible as it feels, that burning sensation, the putrid smell, I always knew afterwards it's going to get better because my body was holding onto something very toxic until I let it out of me. You have to go through that very painful thing and then you're done. You rinse off your mouth, you brush your teeth, you lay back in bed and it seems like the next day you're already better. And I think it's this thing where we hold on to that toxin for so long, it just absorbs into our system. So my remedy to all that is I feel the feels end of the feelings and then I rebound. It's like exercising an emotional muscle to the point of breakage to failure. And then you're like, okay, I'm done. Chill. Put yourself back together. But you have to be in a very safe space, mentally, physically, spiritually, with a lot of emotional support because it could push you to the brain.

[B]

I think to each their own, right? Some of us are able to set aside time, schedule it for grieving, and some of us doesn't seem to work like that. It comes when it comes. And all I can say is if you can, then create some space for it and Just let yourself feel it. Because I am of the belief and emotions in general, they don't do well with you sort of pushing them away. And the more you do that, the worse they get and the worse your body feels it too. And then it starts to erupt in other ways and far less opportune moments. So I am trying to take space for myself. I haven't been working as much over the past month for a reason. And I think I'm mostly in a space where I've taken some time. And I know that I will probably still have moments where something just out of nowhere triggers me. And I will do the best I can to sort of feel it without totally leaping off the ledge, but to just give some space to it, I.

[A]

Just want to say explicitly, if there's ever a time that you need somebody to talk to, please do not ever hesitate to reach out to call me for big and small things. Jewel. I'm saying this to Jewel, not to everybody listening.

[B]

Next thing you know, he was like, who this? How'd you get this number?

[A]

Block and delete. Yeah. So at the risk of opening up the emotional can of worms, I thought about this. If you wanted to. Would you like to say something? If your brother is listening or can feel the energy somehow, this is kind of your final message to him.

[B]

I think the one thing that I would want him to know is that we loved him. And the reason why I say this, that may sound stupid, simple, reductive even, but I keep thinking the one thing you don't want anybody in your life to go out of this world feeling is that they were unwelcome, that they were unloved. And I know that my brother did question that. I tried my best to remind him of that, that our family did love him, even if their actions didn't show that. So that is the one thing that I would just want him to know, is that we all loved him and obviously very much, given the various stages of being destroyed I've seen with my family, they loved him so much and continue to love him. And also, he doesn't have to worry about his children. We will do the best we can to look after them.

[A]

Jewel's brother of 10 years senior, a man who's still young because he's my age. Be at peace, John, whatever plane of existence you may exist on now. Thank you, dear listener, for hanging in there with us. This was an unusual but I think very necessary conversation to have. And I thank Jewel, my guest today, for being so transparent processing our emotions real time. And in public in hopes of not just processing our own feelings, but hopefully helping you along the way. And if there's one thing that we'd want you to do is get your affairs in order so that some person in your life doesn't have to do this for you, because it's a burden you don't want to give to anybody.