Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Hello and welcome to Stop Wasting Your Life, the podcast. I'm Ava Heimbach, your host and founder, and today we're here with Mr. Brian Welch. We're going to be chatting about grief. Brian lost his son who was ill with addiction, and he ended up using that grief to become a teacher. That really shows in his book what that loss reveals about love and compassion and living with that love and loss at the same time. So I'm excited for you guys to meet him, and let's get to it. Before we begin, are you interested in donating or sponsoring us? This podcast runs on the support of our listeners, so please... If you enjoy listening to us, go to our website, www.stopwastingyourlifepodcast.com and click on the sponsor or donate tab. It would mean so much to us. We also have an event coming up that is sponsored by Stop Wasting Your Life Podcast. It's located in Lawrence, Kansas for anybody who is in the area. It's a movie night. We're watching Inception. at Liberty Hall Theater on January 29th at 7 p.m. We are raising money for one of my friends who is in a wheelchair after being diagnosed with a brain tumor and having surgery that caused him to be paralyzed. We're going to host a fundraiser for him and try and raise money for him to go to Hawaii and experience a trip that he would never be able to experience otherwise. So if you're in the area, go ahead. come join us, come support us. I'd love to meet you. I also want everyone to know, and I say this every episode, but there is no right or wrong way to live your life. The definition of a fulfilling life is unique to each person, and I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. I just want to give you ideas, knowledge, and inspiration to help you create a life that you think is beautiful.

• Speaker #1

  Welcome to Stop Wasting Your Life,

• Speaker #0

  the podcast that helps you break free from a life of self-doubt and distraction and inspires you to create a fulfilling and purposeful life. Each week we dive into actionable advice, meaningful conversation, and insightful interviews to empower you to prioritize your well-being, pursue your passions, and become the best version of yourself. It's time to stop wasting your life and start building one that you are excited to wake up to.

• Speaker #1

  Hello and welcome to Stop Wasting Your Life, the podcast.

• Speaker #0

  I'm Ava Heimbach, your host, and today we're here with Mr. Brian Welch.

• Speaker #1

  Hi, it's great to be here.

• Speaker #0

  How are you doing today?

• Speaker #1

  I'm great, thank you.

• Speaker #0

  Good. I heard the weather's warmer there today, so.

• Speaker #1

  It's a nice warm winter day in Kansas.

• Speaker #0

  Is it sunny?

• Speaker #1

  It just got sunny. It was cloudy all morning and just the sun just came out.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, good. I love when the sun's out. So before we begin, maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself.

• Speaker #1

  Well, I was a business executive for... I suppose I still am in some ways, but only on a sort of advisory basis now. But I was the chief executive of about half a dozen companies over the course of my career, most of them in the media business. And I... I've written a couple of books. My first book was called Beautiful and Abundant, and that was a book about positive visualizations for the future of humanity. A lot of it about alternative agriculture and ways of, you know, conserving resources and doing fun things to create your own food and just a way of looking at the world in a positive way rather than focusing on obstacles. And in 2013, my son died. He died. he was an addict and struggled with his addiction for several years. He died when he was 25, and of course it was devastating as it is for any parent. And in the depths of that grief of when I was really truly devastated and kind of difficult to function, something in my experience really stood out to me, which was that At my lowest points, I felt a new warmth, a new. New warmth toward other human beings, a new compassion, new sense of compassion. I just deeper affection for people in sort of unconditionally people in general. And I was curious even in that in the very sad state. I was saying, I was curious why that feeling came with the grief and that led me to deepen my spiritual practice. to think more deeply about that subject and then eventually to write the my most recent book which comes out in April from new harbinger called the gift of a broken heart. My exploration of that idea led me to believe that grief is 1st of all, 1 of the vehicles through which people connect with each other most deeply. You know, if we go, if we join each other at a funeral and we're both in tears, there's just a connection that happens there. That's extraordinary. The other thing I discovered, which I thought was sort of surprising was when I didn't really, you know, when your child dies, particularly of a mental illness like addiction, you can never be completely sure that it wasn't your fault. to some degree or another. There's no reason to believe it is your fault, really. You can't—that question cannot be conclusively answered, but you can never know that it wasn't your fault. And it sort of shattered a lot of narratives I realized that I'd been maintaining in my own head about why my family was safe, why I was safe, you know, and their narratives about healthy lifestyles and about education or work ethic or blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. Those were really sort of shattered by my grief experience. And I realized as they started trying to reassert themselves, as I recovered some from the grief, I discovered that those narratives are also narratives about superiority. They aren't just narratives about our own safety. There are also narratives about why the pain that we see in the world, the pain that we witness in other people, why we're not vulnerable to that, because in some way or another we figure out a story about why we're superior and it won't happen to us. And I understand that impulse very well because I feel it. But those narratives also separate us from other people. They dampen our capacities for compassion. They cool the natural warmth that we can feel for one another. And so I made it my practice to see what it would be like to live without those narratives, to live with the sadness rather than setting up defenses against it. And, you know, I concluded along the way that I was probably a better person for that experience. And I committed myself to trying to preserve the feelings of warmth and compassion that came with the grief. And part of that is preserving a sort of general sense of sadness, which is not at all an obstruction to joy, I don't think. But that general awareness of the sadness of the world, I think it's a valuable awareness. So it's something I try to maintain. And that's what this new book that's coming out is about.

• Speaker #0

  When you say your awareness of the sadness in the world, what does that look like? What is that sadness of the world that you're talking about?

• Speaker #1

  Well, as you know... My wife Carolyn and I raise cattle and sheep on our little ranch here in Kansas. And we love animals and love our animals, and they're expressly being raised to be killed and eaten. They are meat animals. I think that's sad, and I feel very sad when I take them to the slaughterhouse. I live with that awareness that this is the backdrop for our lives. And so it's that kind of sadness. But there's also, you know, all kinds of mundane things. I mean, politics, let's say. How does one read the news headlines on any given day without feeling very sad for the great suffering that those headlines represent? Or the evil acts that human beings commit in positions of power? power and just mundane evil acts that occur across the world every day. The fundamental thing, from my perspective, Eva, is that human beings idealize. We were designed for that. And so whenever we're in a situation, we're thinking about how that situation could be improved. And we create these ideal visions for how we'd like the world to be. But the world is not ideal. The world is real. We're living in what's actually happening, and that never conforms to our ideal visions. And then I think it makes us sad. And sometimes I think it's important to say too that very often that sadness emerges when we resisted. It emerges as anger or outrage or depression or all kinds it emerges in all kinds of harmful ways. And I've come to think that that's partly the result or, to a great degree, the result of the fact we're resisting the inherent sadness of the world as it is.

• Speaker #0

  In your book, you talk about grief, again, as something that can teach us something in the world or about the world. What did grief really... Teach you in the beginning, but then also now did that change in between?

• Speaker #1

  Well, I think I'm learning something new every day. I'm sure I'll learn something new in this conversation. I think rather than teaching us about the world or it rather than teaching me about the world, I would probably say that it taught me a lot about myself. that I didn't know, which changes and knowing those things has changed my relationship to the world. I think it's helped me develop a capacity for awareness, for seeing things in a more accurate way. It's made me, I think, I think the experience made me, as I said before, a more compassionate person, a warmer person And it's deepened my appreciation for my human relationships, I think.

• Speaker #0

  Do you feel like that changed your relationship with your immediate family now? Like your wife?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, well, yes. I think so. I mean, it certainly changed my feelings in the context of my family. But I think, you know, my wife has said more than once that... you know, she comments often on the changes she's seen in me through the experience. And I would certainly say my relationships with my relationship with her and my relationships with my daughter and her family are just better than they were before. Warmer, more You know, better in almost every way that one could describe them. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Did your son struggle with addiction for a long time or was it later on in his life?

• Speaker #1

  Well, he didn't. He was in college when he got when he became ill with addiction. He went to college when the opioid epidemic. when opioids were really widely available. And there were pain clinics, you know, it seemed like on almost every street corner that were basically set up to prescribe opioids. And there was a real epidemic of opioid addiction during the time he was in college. And that was where his addiction started. So he was ill for I guess six or seven years before he died.

• Speaker #0

  I'm very lucky in the sense that I've never experienced a deep grief. And grief is something that I understand in very small ways, like very small things will give me this sense of grief. But I've never experienced grief at such a deep level, especially like losing a child, which is probably the greatest sense of grief that we can experience. For someone who hasn't experienced deep grief like that, how would you describe it to them? What does it feel like? How did it change you from before and after?

• Speaker #1

  Well when he died, the really acute grief felt completely disorienting. Carolyn and I had a conversation that day where we discussed, frankly, whether we wanted to go on living and concluded that we did. I think it was probably helpful to us that we had another child who needed us, but I think we probably would have decided we wanted to live anyway. But it's that kind of disorientation where you're not really, we really weren't sure that we wanted to be part of all this anymore. This living thing. I mean, it was very hard to communicate with other people. You know, we often, you know, just felt sort of mute, very turbulent emotions, you know, sort of all the time. I cried uncontrollably many times a day for a long time, perhaps a year. And then I still cried on a daily basis for years after that. And small sadnesses that I witnessed affected me more than they would, than they had before. You know, sentimental commercials on television or the death of a friend's pet, you know, it's truly devastating and I have, you know, I do I think it's very courageous of you to just say, "I haven't experienced that kind of deep grief." I think, you know, you probably will. Almost everyone does. I think if I could have a chat with myself when I was in my early 20s, I would probably suggest to myself that I not block, not allow fear to obstruct my anticipation of losing my parents or grandparents. Not let fear obstruct my awareness of what it's going to be like when they die. And I find that if I'm, if I'm sufficiently open emotionally, That I'm not devastated by the death of a favorite. Pat, the way that I was devastated by the depth of my son, of course. But if I'm sufficiently emotionally open and honest with myself, that's real grief, you know? when a dog or a cat that we care about dies, that's real grief. And, you know, we may expect that our grandparents will die of course. And so it has a different temperature, I think than the death of a child or a spouse, but the grief is grief and it is, All of that, all of these kinds of grief, even grief for the state of the world, I think has the potential if we're if we open ourselves to it, to open us up to other people in compelling and valuable ways. Also,

• Speaker #0

  I think sometimes for me, if I'm feeling grief about something like losing a pet or a breakup, I almost minimize it. it because I think no, it could be so much worse. I think that's something that I struggle with and I have to understand that just because it looks a little different doesn't mean it's not grief.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, it is grief. It's real grief and we will minimize that's natural. I think we all do that in just the way you described. But I think that instinct for minimizing the grief we're feeling is related to the way we might minimize the grief someone else is feeling. Or avoid connecting with the grief someone else is feeling. And so, you know, my experience is that it can be kind of valuable to go ahead and experience the smaller griefs fully and allow ourselves to be familiar with them because I think it helps us. Empathize with other others who are feeling grief and helps us open up to them invaluable ways.

• Speaker #0

  So how has your relationship to joy changed? What is what does joy look like now?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, well, one of the impacts on me was that in the worst of the grief. I really did not feel there was any reason for me to care about myself or care about anything. That was part of the experience, but it seemed important to care about myself, care for myself, to care for others around me, to love and So, you know, I think I almost consciously asked myself one day, if I can't care for myself for any reason, can I care for myself unconditionally? And I, you know, occasionally, sporadically, I could. I could care. address myself in a friendly way, even if I had no reason for feeling friendly toward me. Which made it sort of obvious that I could care for others in a less conditional way. That I didn't have to have a reason to care for somebody. Which interestingly and this was unexpected to me That unconditionality became a new feature of joyous experiences. You know, a great, a beautiful bird at the feeder or, you know, a new baby animal out in the pasture or, you know, or a great moment in a movie. I was in the habit my whole life and, of if I felt, if joy arose, I would immediately start trying to create a narrative about why that made me joyful. And, you know, the idea behind or the instinct behind that was, well, I want to seek out this feeling of joy again. And so I'm going to analyze the conditions that led to the joyful feeling. wrecked by grief, I wasn't, I didn't have the capacity for creating those narratives or creating those stories about why I was feeling this or that. But I did experience joy, even to some extent in the depths of it, even in the worst times in the grief, there were flashes of it. And it arose in this unconditional way. And I came to really appreciate that unconditionality, the spontaneity, the wakefulness that it creates when you're experiencing joy and the other things in the moment in a relatively open emotional state. They have a quite brilliant and vivid quality. And I do appreciate that.

• Speaker #0

  How did losing your son reshape your understanding of what it means to be human or that human experience?

• Speaker #1

  Well, as you said before, Eva, you're right. Losing a child is a very extreme experience and an extreme experience of grief. But all human beings experience grief and almost all of us. You know, go around, I think idealizing and being disappointed. Being disillusioned it's interesting isn't it that disillusioned is considered a negative to be disillusioned is considered a negative experience but literally it means to have illusions removed and. Maybe it's something we should be grateful for. I think I came to see. The human experience as being to a very great degree rooted in grief and I came to see my fellow human beings as. Vulnerable kind of noble in a way. I am, I admire human beings more than I did before that we do idealize that we aspire. and that we are, you know, in the great looming shadow of mortality for all of us. We're brave and sad. And so, yeah, many of those viewpoints arose for me out of my own grief experience. Yeah, I think I said it.

• Speaker #0

  This is a very random question, but I might not even add this into the podcast, but I had a friend ask me once if I had the opportunity to live forever, would I take it? And what's your answer? If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it?

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely not. No.

• Speaker #0

  That's exactly what I said.

• Speaker #1

  No.

• Speaker #0

  I would not either. No.

• Speaker #1

  I don't know what... I think, you know, everything is impermanent. Everything is ultimately mortal. Planets, stars. There is no live forever that we can find in the physical universe. And so I definitely don't think that the experience of being immortal would be a human experience. So in a way, you know, it's sort of like it's an impossible question to answer because mortality is the most fundamental framing of life. It is part of the most basic definition of living. And yeah, I really value. The way that my impermanence, my mortality affects my view of what's happening. I also think it would be sort of horrible to be the only immortal living thing. Even if it was the whole, even if it was all of humanity, I think it would still be rather horrible because we depend on a living system that has mortality built into it. And no matter how we live, no matter what we eat, millions of creatures are dying to sustain us throughout our lives. And the idea that we would never... participate or sacrifice our own lives back into that system seems kind of horrible to me. So no, I would absolutely, I do not wish to live forever.

• Speaker #0

  Me neither. My answer was because that Knowing that I'm not going to live forever, and I don't even know when I could get in a car accident tomorrow. But it's because of that that I do a lot of things that I wouldn't do normally. Like yesterday, it was raining, and I thought, I'm going to go swim in the rain. And my sister said, I don't want to go swim in the rain. And I said, if you died tomorrow, you would look down from heaven and say, oh man, I wish I would have gone swimming in the rain. So I think that... Idea that, oh, we aren't going to live forever and we have to make sure that we spend as much time as we can embracing this life that we were given. I think a lot of the reasons I do things is because I know that I have to embrace this life that I was given.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a wonderful point. What would be the value of an experience? If. We knew that we have the rest of eternity to have that experience. Life might feel pretty dull away if it weren't temporary.

• Speaker #0

  I 100% agree.

• Speaker #1

  That's a great point you make.

• Speaker #0

  How do you stay connected to your son's legacy without being consumed by your sorrow?

• Speaker #1

  Well, that's another thing, you know, that rises right to the surface rather quickly. All of a parent's memories of their child become painful after the child has died. And, you know, we felt that if we didn't. become acquainted with and comfortable with that pain that we'd spend the rest of our lives trying to forget which would be terrible so we left his photographs up put new photographs of him up and you know in the process of writing the gift of a broken heart i've experienced that pain Frequently and many, many times. But if I tried to avoid it, I'd be avoiding him. And so I decided not to try to avoid it.

• Speaker #0

  Was it hard writing your book or did you find it more comforting?

• Speaker #1

  Both. It was, it was hard and. You know, you spoke of legacy if his death had permanently wrecked me. Or turned me into driven me into my own addiction or lots of it's hard to sustain a marriage through deep grief and many marriages end when a child is lost. But that wreckage then becomes your child's legacy.

• Speaker #0

  What do you mean by that?

• Speaker #1

  Well, I wrote the book in part to give his legacy value, to create to try to create something positive for him. from his life to perhaps generate something positive from the terrible pain and suffering he went through. If, you know, if it had just wrecked us and left nothing but wreckage behind, That'd be his, as I say, that would be his legacy. And so we worked and struggled to put our lives back together in a new way and to create... A legacy for him that had positive aspects and, you know. People, friends often avoid talking to us about Noah. That was my son's name, Noah, for a variety of reasons, I suppose. But I'm sure one of the reasons is they don't want to make us feel sad. But even in the most acute part of the grief experience, it was quite wonderful, really. When people would tell us stories about him, when people would share funny things he'd said or a kind thing he did. That was definitely a source of joy, even in really dark times. And those stories made me cry, of course.

• Speaker #0

  In two minutes, how would you sum up your son? What was Noah like in two minutes?

• Speaker #1

  Sure. I can do, well, I can take a shot at it. He was very sensitive, very kind, very funny person with a very dry sense of humor. He was 6'5".

• Speaker #0

  Wow.

• Speaker #1

  And, you know, physically beautiful. And he was possibly too sensitive for this world. He was prone to anxiety, and it would overwhelm him on occasion. Usually in private, within the family, he put on a good show in the rest of his life, I think. But yeah, he was all of those things. He was very good company. You would have liked him.

• Speaker #0

  Did he love animals just as much as you guys?

• Speaker #1

  Yes.

• Speaker #0

  I feel like everyone in your family has to love animals to some degree.

• Speaker #1

  I guess so. Yeah, you're pretty well surrounded by them here.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. Did grief change what love looked like and meant to you?

• Speaker #1

  Yes. Interesting thing that... occurred to me along the line was, you know, I'm practicing caring for myself unconditionally and, you know, seeking out teachers who knew something about unconditional love made me realize that my ego doesn't really like being loved unconditionally. My ego wants to be loved for reasons because I'm so... special. I've come to put what we usually mean by love, there's a more mundane meaning for the word, in one category of experience, which is very valuable and wonderful. And unconditional love, the friendliness and affection that we naturally feel for each other and other people in general, in another category of experience. And I think it's of immense value. And it's much less personal than what we usually refer to when we talk about loving someone. I think I feel that personal kind of love. More intensely, I think I feel almost everything more intensely than I did 15 years ago. And I know that I value unconditional love, unconditional friendliness much more highly. And I think I understand it much better than I did before the experience.

• Speaker #0

  What is your definition of unconditional love? What does that mean to you?

• Speaker #1

  Have you ever encountered a hurt kid or an injured animal that was completely defenseless and needed help? I think that's what unconditional love feels like. It's the emotion that we experience when we perceive someone. Another living thing as being completely vulnerable and defenseless. And we want to do, we want to care for it. To me, that's the sensation.

• Speaker #0

  So obviously the title of my podcast is Stop Wasting Your Life. does not wasting your life look like to you? What is a life of meaning and purpose? What does that mean to you?

• Speaker #1

  Being awake. I think there are, you know, there are infinite ways of living a life of meaning and purpose. For some people, it might be a life of pure joy Contemplation meditation, some people are designed to just to explore their own minds in retreat. Other people become great leaders of 1 kind or another. Some people are extremely productive. Other people, their productivity couldn't be measured in any external way. And I think all those lives have purpose. But I think for each individual to live their purpose fully, I think we all need to practice being aware in the moment. I think we all have to practice being awake. And, you know, thankfully there are practices, traditions, teachers around who can help us stay awake. But I think wakefulness, I think awareness is the most essential ingredient in that.

• Speaker #0

  I've never heard... Being awake. I really like that. I've heard being aware, but being awake has such a different meaning to me.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, it's one of my favorite words, awake. And friendliness is another one of my favorite words. I'm a meditator and meditation is really just a practice of watching your own thoughts and feelings arise non-judgmentally and doing it over and over again. And the value, I think, comes from developing friendliness toward your own thoughts and feelings so that you're not avoiding them all the time. If we're unfriendly toward our own thoughts and feelings, toward our own minds, then we're busily trying to obstruct thoughts and feelings, trying to stay out of our own minds. And that's kind of the opposite of being awake. That's... An aesthetic way of living. So, yeah, I like the word awake a lot and I like the word friendliness a lot.

• Speaker #0

  Last question, which is more for me than anyone else. But for someone who doesn't, I want to learn how to meditate and I try, but I just don't know where to look. Like what resources would you give me or someone who... wants to learn how to meditate because I try and then I get distracted and frustrated and then I stop.

• Speaker #1

  Well, being distracted and frustrated is great because that's where the work is so immediately I would just say Your pot of gold is on the other side of your frustration. Just sit there.

• Speaker #0

  Sitting there is hard for me.

• Speaker #1

  I know, I understand. And be friendly toward yourself. And some of the writers that I, you know, that I, some writers who I deeply respect, there's a book called Meditation in Action by Chögyam Trungpa. Tibetan teacher. I think that's an extraordinarily powerful book about meditation. I think, I think Payment Children is a very good teacher and her books are very valuable. Sharon Salzberg is a very good teacher. And I think I could recommend any of her books or of Payment Children's. Or there's one other person I wanted to mention, Tara Brock. Another excellent teacher whose books are, I think, super valuable.

• Speaker #0

  I'll have to check those out because that's something that I really want to focus on getting better at. But it's quite challenging for me in my racing brain and thoughts.

• Speaker #1

  Well, and it's harder when you're younger. You know, it's just harder in a younger age. body and in a younger mind but obviously i'm a great believer and i believe it's valuable for everybody and the good stuff is just right on the other side on the side of you on the other side of your frustration so i just need to sit a little bit longer yeah that's right let the frustration go blow by and then and then it's right out it's what after that is what i yeah and it could be super helpful to find a meditation gathering and to meditate with other people Then it's embarrassing to get up in the middle of it.

• Speaker #0

  That is true. Wait, I need to use embarrassment to my advantage.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, exactly.

• Speaker #0

  Well, thank you so much for letting me talk to you and having this conversation again. I loved your book. I recommend it to anybody. You said it was going to be out in April.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, so you got a copy of my original self-published version of the book. It got bought by New Harbinger Publications shortly after I self-published it, so it's not technically out there for sale right now. It comes out April 1st from the new publisher, yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And is there a way we could add like a link to it? Yeah, you can...

• Speaker #1

  It's available for pre-orders on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble online. And, you know, I'd encourage anybody to visit my sub stack or my website, which is thegiftofabrokenheart.com.

• Speaker #0

  Well, thank you again.

• Speaker #1

  Sure. And say hi to your parents and your sister for me.

• Speaker #0

  I will. Enjoy the rest of your day.

• Speaker #1

  Okay. Thanks, Ava.

• Speaker #0

  Well, that concludes our episode. I really hope you enjoyed our conversation with Mr. Brian Welch. And just a little reminder that we will link his website and his book in the show notes. So go check those out again. I read the self-published version of his book and I absolutely loved it. It's so good. Even if you haven't experienced deep, deep, deep grief like losing a child, I 110% recommend it. I think everyone should.

• Speaker #1

  has a lot to learn from it.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you guys again, and we'll see you next week. For more information, go to www.stopwastingyourlifepodcast.com and we will see you next week.