In this heartfelt episode of Grieving Voices, I'm joined by the remarkable Kris Carr, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, wellness activist, and cancer thriver. Known as a force of nature and recognized as one of Oprah's Super Soul 100 influential thought leaders, Kris shares insights from her latest book "I'm Not a Morning Person," which delves into the raw emotions that surface when life falls apart unexpectedly.
Kris discusses navigating through loss and grief with humor and hope while providing readers with strategies to move forward. She opens up about her personal journey living with stage 4 cancer for over two decades and how it has shaped her approach to health advocacy.
The conversation touches on profound topics such as:
Listeners will learn how Kris transformed fear into proactive self-care measures that millions now embrace. She also emphasizes the power of naming our emotions as a step toward understanding them better.
Kris's story isn't just about survival; it's an inspiring testament to thriving amid adversity by harnessing love, acceptance, and resilience. Join us for an episode that promises deep reflection and practical wisdom for anyone grappling with their own grieving process or supporting others through theirs.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
_______
NEED HELP?
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
This episode is sponsored by Do Grief Differently™️, my twelve-week, one-on-one, in-person/online program for grievers who have suffered any type of loss to feel better. Click here to learn new tools, grief education, and the only evidence-based method for moving beyond the pain of grief.
Would you like to join the mission of Grieving Voices in normalizing grief and supporting hurting hearts everywhere? Become a supporter of the show HERE.
In this heartfelt episode of Grieving Voices, I'm joined by the remarkable Kris Carr, a multiple New York Times bestselling author, wellness activist, and cancer thriver. Known as a force of nature and recognized as one of Oprah's Super Soul 100 influential thought leaders, Kris shares insights from her latest book "I'm Not a Morning Person," which delves into the raw emotions that surface when life falls apart unexpectedly.
Kris discusses navigating through loss and grief with humor and hope while providing readers with strategies to move forward. She opens up about her personal journey living with stage 4 cancer for over two decades and how it has shaped her approach to health advocacy.
The conversation touches on profound topics such as:
Listeners will learn how Kris transformed fear into proactive self-care measures that millions now embrace. She also emphasizes the power of naming our emotions as a step toward understanding them better.
Kris's story isn't just about survival; it's an inspiring testament to thriving amid adversity by harnessing love, acceptance, and resilience. Join us for an episode that promises deep reflection and practical wisdom for anyone grappling with their own grieving process or supporting others through theirs.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
_______
NEED HELP?
If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
This episode is sponsored by Do Grief Differently™️, my twelve-week, one-on-one, in-person/online program for grievers who have suffered any type of loss to feel better. Click here to learn new tools, grief education, and the only evidence-based method for moving beyond the pain of grief.
Would you like to join the mission of Grieving Voices in normalizing grief and supporting hurting hearts everywhere? Become a supporter of the show HERE.
Victoria Volk
00:00:00 - 00:00:15
Hello. Hello. Thank you for tuning into Grieving Voices. Today, I'm excited to share my guests, Kris Carr, with you, my listeners. She is a multiple New York times bestselling author, wellness activist, and cancer thriver.
Victoria Volk
00:00:15 - 00:00:44
She's been called a force of nature by o magazine and was named a new role model by the New York Times. Kris is also a member of Oprah's Super Soul 100, a group of the most influential thought leaders today. Her latest book, I'm not a mourning person, braving loss, grief, and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart, shares what to expect when you're not expecting your world to fall apart. It's raw and inspiring, but has joy, humor, and hope too. This book gives readers tips and strategies to move forward and start living again.
Victoria Volk
00:00:44 - 00:01:04
Kris has helped millions of people take charge of their health and live like they mean it through her award winning books, blog, online courses, and membership communities. Thank you so much for being here and taking your time to share with my listeners. And I just gotta say, I loved the book. The movie we recommend.
Kris Carr
00:01:04 - 00:01:05
Sorry. You can't really see it.
Victoria Volk
00:01:05 - 00:01:20
I loved it. I do have one question because I wanna make sure I ask this because I just I don't remember reading the acknowledgments the first time., And so I just kind of peeked through now. What book on grief were you given by your friend, Jeanette?
Kris Carr
00:01:21 - 00:01:24
Oh, well, that's Julia Samuel's book.
Victoria Volk
00:01:25 - 00:01:26
Julia Samuel's book. Okay.
Kris Carr
00:01:27 - 00:02:13
Yeah. And, one of her books, and that was my introduction to a world that I was resistant to enter. And then once I entered it, I realized, actually, this is the conversation that not only do I need for myself, but I wanna have with other people because it's the most meaningful conversation that I could have. And I didn't realize up until my most recent life kick just how grief was woven into, the nooks and crannies of my heart, my history, and how it was really something I was so afraid to touch, and yet it was holding me back.
Victoria Volk
00:02:13 - 00:03:00
In reading the book, I resonated with so many aspects of your story of re I, like, reconnected with parts of myself where, like, I was like, I could imagine myself back in time and feeling those similar emotions. And I have, like, a 1000000 and 1 questions, it feels like on my paper. But what you're here to talk about though is the death of your father, which seems to have been the catalyst for you to explore grief in a way a deeper and more meaningful way than you ever had despite all of like, despite a stage 4 cancer diagnosis that you've been living with and all of that, like because there's a lot of grief in that. And so to not really touch it until until recently. Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:03:00 - 00:03:04
It's a very timely book, I'm thinking, for you.
Kris Carr
00:03:05 - 00:03:16
Oh, definitely for me. And I you know, it wasn't the book that I set out to write. It I've written 7 books. This is my 7th book. And you know, there comes a time when your publishers are like, Sue, we need to write another book.
Kris Carr
00:03:17 - 00:03:47
And it had been a minute, and there was this idea that I should write something that's more mass market, more appealing. I've written books for cancer patients. I've written books about plant based living. Apparently, I like to tackle difficult topics, vegetables and disease. And so anyway, there was these conversations about me writing something for a wider audience, and I initially went to that.
Kris Carr
00:03:47 - 00:04:09
You know, what's that self help, aspirational, inspirational book that I could write? Which at some point, I will probably write. But everything in my body and in my being and in my heart was like, I can't write that book now. I don't feel that way. I'm not inspired by that conversation.
Kris Carr
00:04:09 - 00:04:49
I am hurting. And so this was my father was diagnosed with cancer in 2016, and he lived for about four and a half years with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. And during that time, you know, obviously, it's a big life change for the whole family. But I was approaching my milestone of living with my own stage 4 cancer for 20 years. My we were in the middle of a global pandemic, so each and every one of us was hurting in a whole new way and losing people left and right, losing our jobs, losing our former sense of selves, losing our sense of safety and security.
Kris Carr
00:04:49 - 00:05:37
And my business was struggling because I had taken the steps to pull back so that I could be more present with my family. And what I realized is I hadn't life proofed my business to allow me to do that. And so I was going through a very difficult time. And my initial response, even though I've been doing been in the wellness world for 20 years, and so I've done a lot of my own personal work and I've coached a lot of people in 20 years. Even though I thought I had done this kind of deep healing work when it comes to our mental health and heart tending, it was a big blind spot for me because my go to is to hustle, is to solve, is to fix, is to get the job done.
Kris Carr
00:05:38 - 00:06:09
And I was in a time and place where there wasn't a way to get the job done. Right? It was a much deeper, more spiritual, more impactful journey that I would have to go on. I couldn't check a box or get something behind me, much like living with cancer. And so instead of trying to push the river or hold back the ocean because I was afraid it would devour me, I decided to go through it.
Kris Carr
00:06:09 - 00:06:37
You know? And I remember the moment I write about in the introduction when the dam broke when I was sitting in a parking lot at CVS and my mother had asked me to go get more insured because it was the only thing my dad could tolerate. And I am at the aisle not knowing how many to get because I don't know how much time he has to live and I'm not consciously choosing those thoughts. But here they come. And it was that moment of pushing it down and working harder and all the things that I do to avoid pain where I couldn't hold it back anymore.
Kris Carr
00:06:37 - 00:06:53
And I was running through the CVS to get back to my car so that nobody would see me cry. And I get in, I break down all of the emotions coming out. And afterwards, I feel this quiet in the storm. I start to feel a little bit better. I feel a break from the fever.
Kris Carr
00:06:54 - 00:07:13
And I think to myself, where are other areas of where are the other areas of my life that I am holding back the opportunity to feel better by just allowing myself to be with the emotion. And that truly was the turning point for me to say, oh, I have to look at this.
Victoria Volk
00:07:14 - 00:07:19
One of my mottos is allowing myself to feel is allowing myself to heal.
Kris Carr
00:07:19 - 00:07:20
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:07:20 - 00:07:30
Pretty much embodies what you just shared. I think the importance of just allowing ourselves to feel what we have to feel, even if it's to go into our car and have an ugly cry.
Kris Carr
00:07:31 - 00:07:44
You're so right. And for many of us, we've never allowed ourselves to do that. Maybe we don't even know what we're feeling. We just know that there's some sort of disturbance in the force. We're feeling off.
Kris Carr
00:07:44 - 00:08:19
We're feeling unsettled. And perhaps that's old stuff. Like, when we were kids and we didn't have the words to describe what pain we were experiencing, what discomfort we were experiencing, we may not also have those words as adults. And so it's an incredible exploration process to even say, what if I just start by trying to identify and articulate what feeling is up for me right now? I don't have to fix it.
Kris Carr
00:08:19 - 00:08:23
Maybe I could just give it a name and start it there.
Victoria Volk
00:08:23 - 00:08:34
On your Instagram, I saw you had a picture of yourself as a little girl, which prompted me to read the caption. Can you share a little bit about that for our listeners?
Kris Carr
00:08:36 - 00:08:38
About being a little girl?
Victoria Volk
00:08:38 - 00:08:38
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:08:39 - 00:08:41
Having what you the exercise of taking your a picture of yourself
Kris Carr
00:08:42 - 00:08:42
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:08:43 - 00:08:44
as a little as a child?
Kris Carr
00:08:44 - 00:09:17
You know, sometimes when we don't know how to self-soothe, we weren't given those tools. Many of us and our parents weren't given those tools either. And certainly, we find ourselves in a time of mourning. Then if we don't know what to give to ourself, I like to have that picture, and then it is the picture that I use up on my desk, or it's, like, in my bathroom or it's in my closet where I'm getting dressed. And to just check-in with her and ask her what she needs.
Kris Carr
00:09:17 - 00:09:40
And to allow her to say, what I really need is a little break. I actually need to play a little bit. I need to give myself more unstructured time, you know, because she's still there. But all of the way that I put on masks or you know, I remember when my mantra was suck it up buttercup. Like, what a terrible mantra.
Kris Carr
00:09:41 - 00:09:51
Right? But it was one I followed. And if I'm willing to tend to her and say, I love you. I'm here for you. What do you need?
Kris Carr
00:09:51 - 00:10:04
I've got you. I can re-parent you. Then inevitably, I, adult Kris, start to experience the healing that comes from that.
Victoria Volk
00:10:04 - 00:10:31
Because in your book, you share how being a child of anxious parents. And because you mentioned it just briefly there a little bit, how that shaped you into adult life being a child of anxious parents. Because I have this theory that and reading your book, I'm like, okay. Well, that makes sense. Because I have the theory that a lot of children are carrying anxiety and fears that aren't even theirs.
Kris Carr
00:10:34 - 00:10:34
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:10:34 - 00:10:37
That of their parents. And then I read that in your book and I'm like, okay. That's kind of affirming.
Kris Carr
00:10:39 - 00:10:52
Yeah. I mean, we are these blank slates, and we pick up vibes. We pick up energy. We pick up behaviors. I think we come here, and we are then domesticated.
Kris Carr
00:10:53 - 00:11:28
And so much of what our job is in this lifetime is to unlearn and to come back to the original source, which is that self-love, love for self, love for others, love for life. And so naturally, if we're raised by parents who are anxious, then anxiety is gonna maybe even go be one of our go to responses to things. So we're kind of moving through life fearful. And anxiety really is a rumination about what may or may not happen. Right?
Kris Carr
00:11:28 - 00:11:42
It's kind of taking fear and saying, I'm thinking ahead. I gotta cover my bases. I gotta have my own back. The world is unsafe. How can I get ahead of this situation so I can make sure I stay safe?
Kris Carr
00:11:43 - 00:12:14
And fear and anxiety serve a purpose. Right? I would say in the book and often try to remind myself that we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. So oftentimes, I think in our very black-and-white society, certain emotions we deem positive and emotions that we should strive to have and show, and other emotions we deem negative as if therefore, there's something deficient about us for having them. And it's sort of like saying, here are all the crayons in the crayon box.
Kris Carr
00:12:15 - 00:12:45
But, Victoria, you can only use blue, green, and red because all the other colors are bad. And if you use those colors, you're bad. And you may be like, but secretly, I love yellow. You know? And so I think when we get a little curious about these emotions and what they're here to teach us and show us, which we can talk about, then we can follow the breadcrumbs and understand how they work and why our brain uses them.
Kris Carr
00:12:45 - 00:13:00
Why did why are we designed to experience anxiety from time to time? How is it a benefit to us? How does it truly keep us safe? And how does it go awry? Right?
Kris Carr
00:13:00 - 00:13:18
What do I need to do when I'm finding myself spinning out, let's say, before a CAT scan? I get checked every 5 years. There's always gonna be some anxiety before I go in for my scan. This is the moment, 21 years later, when my doctor says, oh, it turned on. It's finally aggressive.
Kris Carr
00:13:18 - 00:13:43
This is what we've been waiting for. And I'm I'm gonna have some anxiety, but I can develop some tools to soothe that anxiety. I can develop some tools to make sure that that anxiety doesn't become a rumination that's out of control that can even become almost like an addiction, like a hot spot that I'll just go to. It's almost like we're going to the mental gym when we're dealing with some of this stuff.
Victoria Volk
00:13:44 - 00:14:19
Those that may not be familiar with you and never heard of you, can you just briefly share? Because I know we've mentioned it, but we haven't really said about your diagnosis. And then I'd like to move into how that anxiety and that fear played a role through your diagnosis and how that transitioned to when you became then a caregiver for your father. And then the moment that you realized, you know, the P there's like 3, I have a note here. There's 3 spiritual or 3 pivotal moments that led you to writing the book.
Victoria Volk
00:14:19 - 00:14:23
And so can we rewind and then fast forward a little bit?
Kris Carr
00:14:24 - 00:14:47
Yes. So, I was in a very different career and had very different hopes and thoughts and dreams for my life. And then on Valentine's Day in 2003, I was diagnosed with a rare and incurable stage 4 cancer. And so the first doctor that I met with suggested a triple organ transplant. The next doctor gave me 10 years to live.
Kris Carr
00:14:47 - 00:15:30
The doctor after that suggested radical treatments that wouldn't do anything. And it was that moment where I realized I had to become my own advocate, and I had to become, as I like to call, the CEO of my health. So as a CEO, the leader of our lives, it's like, okay. I'm responsible for putting together the team, for hiring, for firing, for finding my second in command because the doctors work for me. And I was lucky, or actually just hardworking to find a great oncologist who knew the most about my very rare disease, who had his finger on the pulse of research, and who also had a wonderful bedside manner.
Kris Carr
00:15:30 - 00:15:46
So I was very surprised when he said, sometimes your disease can be slow growing. It can become aggressive. We just don't know. We have to watch and wait. And while we're doing that, we want you to watch and live.
Kris Carr
00:15:46 - 00:16:34
And I didn't really know how to do that. So the first place I went afterwards was the grocery store because I figured vegetables were good, even though I hated them. And what I was truly looking for was some sort of control, some place to put my energy so that I could feel like I was participating in my well-being as opposed to participating in my disease. And that's what started the work that I do first and foremost for cancer patients when I began and then later for people who are interested in not becoming patients, because I truly believe that self-care is health care and that we have more power than we think. And, again, it was this career is not something that I went into saying this is what I wanna do.
Kris Carr
00:16:34 - 00:17:05
But I think for many of us, our lives change in sometimes miraculous ways because of these warning signs or wake up calls that we have. And this is what I chose to do with my wake up call because, again, I live with stage 4 cancer. This is a marathon for me. And I'm very, very inspired to live every moment like it is my first, and I can't wait to have another. And so where are we going after this?
Kris Carr
00:17:06 - 00:17:10
Where would you like me to take you after this? You had a 3 part question.
Victoria Volk
00:17:10 - 00:17:12
I did. I know. I'm I tend to do that.
Kris Carr
00:17:12 - 00:17:14
It's okay.
Victoria Volk
00:17:15 - 00:17:26
Try to squeeze it all in. Just the anxiety of that.
Kris Carr
00:17:19 - 00:17:19
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:17:19 - 00:17:26
Diagnosis and the experience of going through that and then being hit with another rupture, as you call it in your book, of your father?
Kris Carr
00:17:27 - 00:17:53
So for me, like I said earlier, I am the person that's going to pretty much try to put a plan in place. And I think it's very helpful to do that. It's one of the reasons why my work has helped a lot of people is because I help people and people who don't wanna be patients just put that wellness plan together. But a lot of that came from my fear, and a lot of that came from my anxiety. So isn't that wonderful, though?
Kris Carr
00:17:53 - 00:18:39
So fear and anxiety helped me out in a big way. The problem is when they take over and they shut you down, they paralyze you. They make it so that the only thing that you feel like you can do to cope is to numb because they're just too big. And so that's when all of our self-care principles and practices, the toolkits that many of us go through life trying to build, we wanna open the box and lean on a few of them, whether it's through breath work, whether it's with a therapist or a counselor, like, hey, these emotions are too big for me to hold on my own. Oftentimes there may be other things tied into them, past traumas, past grieves.
Kris Carr
00:18:40 - 00:18:59
One of the things that my therapist talked about and I wrote about in the book is she says, when the grief train pulls into the station, it brings all the carbs.
Victoria Volk
00:18:49 - 00:18:49
Mmm
Kris Carr
00:18:49 - 00:18:59
The stuff you thought you were over is behind you, and you're just totally sideswiped. Brings up trauma. It brings up anxiety. It brings up shame.
Kris Carr
00:18:59 - 00:19:10
It brings up rage. For me, I went through a period where, you know, my number one emotion I was experiencing was not grief. It was rage. I'm like, where is all this hot energy coming from? Well, it's old stuff.
Kris Carr
00:19:12 - 00:19:37
And so learning to live with stage 4 cancer for me is more of a mental game than physical game. It's about learning how to work with my fear and anxiety as opposed to be overwhelmed by it because that those moments are going to come. I was talking to a patient the other day, and you know, I'll go to, okay. I'm having this anxious moment. Let me get in my body.
Kris Carr
00:19:37 - 00:19:51
Because sometimes when I'm in a anxious spiraling out place, I'm having kind of an out of body experience. Right? So I could jump on my bike or jump in the water. You know what I mean? Like, right now, I'm in Florida.
Kris Carr
00:19:51 - 00:20:03
The ocean's nearby. Like, why don't you just go for a quick swim? And it's gonna change the channel. It's almost like we're dogs with in brain rot, licking, licking, licking a hot spot. You know?
Kris Carr
00:20:03 - 00:20:13
What if the scan's worse? And what if this and what if that? Well, in this moment, none of that is true. I like to say it's not something until it's something. So why don't you get back to living?
Kris Carr
00:20:13 - 00:20:28
Or it's been 21 years since I've been dealing with this. I know I'm gonna feel anxious. I'm gonna allow myself that day or the day before to go there. But before then, why am I wasting time? Now is it as easy as that?
Kris Carr
00:20:28 - 00:20:33
No. But for me, I've been able to work with my brain.
Victoria Volk
00:20:35 - 00:20:36
You've had a lot of time to practice.
Kris Carr
00:20:37 - 00:20:43
I've had a lot of time to practice. I'm like, come on. Let's go for a bike ride. In this moment, how are you feeling? Pretty good.
Kris Carr
00:20:43 - 00:20:44
Let's focus there.
Victoria Volk
00:20:45 - 00:21:07
So when there was kind of training ground for you, when this happened with your father, I imagine that you had to lean on a lot of those tools that have supported you in getting through your own diagnosis and the spiraling thoughts and all of that. And what did you learn about yourself through the process. And how did that change you?
Kris Carr
00:21:07 - 00:21:08
Thought
Victoria Volk
00:21:08 - 00:21:09
Your perspective, maybe of a lot of things.
Kris Carr
00:21:09 - 00:21:38
Very beautiful question. I mean, I think I'm still learning it. And, I think that it was all well and good for me to work with my own palate, which is me. But then when it come came to working with, you know, the potential of losing someone that I love very dearly, he's my chosen father, so he adopted me. And that was really hard for me because what was coming up, what I didn't realize was a lot of the old abandonment wounds.
Kris Carr
00:21:38 - 00:22:06
The core, you know, father wound was highly activated, the idea of losing him. Because whether I was conscious of it or not, what I was feeling was that he was leaving me. And that's what happened the first time with my biological father. And that's when you go, oh, I have an opportunity here to work with some really old stuff because he's not leaving me. He's dying.
Kris Carr
00:22:07 - 00:22:28
And I want to spend as much good time with him as I can. So because of that, it was inspiring to do the work and to go back into therapy. And and to initially, I was like, oh, no. Cancer's not on my watch. You know, there's one thing I know.
Kris Carr
00:22:28 - 00:22:55
It's navigating cancer, and it's not taking you. I got pissed and angry and called everybody I knew, and I got some wonderful people in my address book. The problem was is that he didn't wanna do any of it. So the treatments that he was undergoing were really hard. So we could do enough to, you know, keep him as well as possible, but he wasn't gonna do a full on lifestyle, save my ass technologies Kris Carr plan.
Kris Carr
00:22:55 - 00:23:38
And so I had to make peace with that and say, the best medicine that I can deploy right now is love and making sure that when I enter the room, love is leading the way and that the time that I have with him is filled with it. And so there's a lot of gin rummy. There's a lot of really wonderful times that we had. And I learned how to let go of more control, which was very anxiety provoking for me. And just to continue to show up with love even though my heart was breaking and breaking wide open too.
Victoria Volk
00:23:39 - 00:23:48
In this book, you really do speak the language of the work that I do in grief recovery, the grief recovery method. And you talk about how grief manifests in our lives and in our bodies and talk about keeping busy.
Victoria Volk
00:23:48 - 00:24:37
You essentially addressed the sense of grief and you essentially addressed them all like including stirbs or short-term energy relieving behaviors and these things that we do to occupy ourselves and distract ourselves from our feelings. And, and you've had so many years of sitting with and working through your grief before writing this book. Who were the people or the resources that have supported you and provided the information that gave you that new perspective. And I know you mentioned that book, on grief, but kind of even before that earlier in your, like, when you were diagnosed and as you were going through that journey, what were the things that helped you shift your perspective from, you know, woe is me to the self-driven mission?
Victoria Volk
00:24:37 - 00:24:43
Or was it just did perfectionism take over? Because I know you talk a lot about perfectionism in your book too a little bit.
Kris Carr
00:24:43 - 00:25:01
I don't know. Maybe sometimes. Oh, maybe sometimes. But I think so I practice what I call the 5 pillars of wellness. So they are basically being mindful of optimizing what you're eating, drinking, thinking, and how you're resting and renewing.
Kris Carr
00:25:02 - 00:25:32
And all of that sits on a foundation of stress management because we know that stress is really the number one killer. And stress comes in all sorts of ways, including heartache. And so that's the basis of the lifestyle practice that I teach in my books and in my community. And that all came from all of my research as a first and foremost, as a cancer patient, what can I do to extend my life? Is there any way I can participate and help my longevity, help my odds?
Kris Carr
00:25:33 - 00:25:59
And it's really the basis of lifestyle medicine, which has been around for a very long time. You know? And so all of that work for 20 years now has certainly taught me a lot about myself and my body. The big turning point for me, I think, emotionally was on my 10 year cancer versary when, you know, one of the doctors had originally given me 10 years to live. And here I am making it to the 10 year mark.
Kris Carr
00:26:01 - 00:26:21
And everybody was so thrilled except for me because I didn't think that unless it was behind me, I could really live my life. So I was very frustrated, very angry. And so I was trying to cure myself since the doctors couldn't cure me. You know? And it wasn't happening.
Kris Carr
00:26:22 - 00:26:54
But I also wasn't my disease wasn't progressing either. And so it was just something that I was having to learn to live with. And there are many things for everybody that we might not want, but we have to learn to live with. And for me, it's cancer. And so I remember thinking in that moment when everybody's celebrating but me that I have to come up with a better way because I could live my whole life with this disease and I could waste it all.
Kris Carr
00:26:55 - 00:27:10
Because I wasn't truly living unless it was behind me on paper. I got that stamp of approval. You're in remission. And what if I lived? A whole lot of years healthy and happy, you know, if I allowed myself to be.
Kris Carr
00:27:11 - 00:27:25
But I didn't get that stamp of approval. And that's when I started to think about the difference between healing and curing. And that curing may or may not happen. You know, it happens in the physical body. It happens for some of us.
Kris Carr
00:27:25 - 00:27:49
Doesn't happen for all of us. There are a lot of people out there who are living really big, abundant, wonderful lives with chronic illnesses, chronic shit pickles, just chronic stuff. And that's okay. But healing can happen for each and every one of us. There is no timeline, and it can happen even beyond our physical form.
Kris Carr
00:27:49 - 00:28:09
And so I started to move more in the direction of aspiring to be on a healing path and to be loving and patient and caring with myself. And that, to me, when you say, okay. Where'd you learn this? What are the most inspirational resources or what not? It was actually that mental shift that changed everything.
Kris Carr
00:28:10 - 00:28:30
There are incredible grief resources out there. Right? You're one of those incredible resources. And it was a world I wasn't very familiar with. And then when we get interested, when we get curious, when we start to, you know, do the research, buy the books, follow the breadcrumbs, we start to find the voices that resonate for us.
Kris Carr
00:28:31 - 00:28:54
But the principles are still universal. You know, and that is that or at least I believe they're universal, that our emotions are energy, we can't amputate them, we need to allow them to flow. When energy is stagnant, it's not good for your physical body. It's not good for your mental health. And emotions are also filled with information.
Kris Carr
00:28:54 - 00:29:10
So if we can become a little bit more emotionally literate and curious, then we can start to learn how to tend to these crayons, these parts of ourselves that make up the whole beautiful picture that is us.
Victoria Volk
00:29:12 - 00:29:30
I'd love to talk about anger a little bit. You talked about a lot about emotions, but and you mentioned anger, and you mentioned anger quite a bit in your book too. And I didn't address my grief until 2019. And that was at that point over 30 years. So I had a lot of time to build up a lot of anger and resentment.
Victoria Volk
00:29:31 - 00:30:12
And so to allow those floodgates to open, it was like, you know, if we imagine ourselves like a tea kettle and this pressure just keeps building and building and building, and if we don't release that pressure, it like, we literally are dying from the inside very, you know, slowly and just deteriorates our bodies. And like you said, it's stress. It's physical stress, emotional stress, mental stress. Imagine that as is your body like a tea kettle. So allowing that rupture in that way, a good rupture, that's a good rupture, you know, but you have, there's a part I wrote here and we act out instead of crying out because anger feels powerful while grief feels powerless.
Victoria Volk
00:30:14 - 00:30:25
And you talk about caring for your anger and your grandmother had a motto, don't cure the darkness, light a candle.
Kris Carr
00:30:25 - 00:30:25
Mmm
Victoria Volk
00:30:26 - 00:30:34
And I absolutely love that. But in talking about anger and the wisdom that anger has for us, what has anger taught you?
Kris Carr
00:30:36 - 00:31:13
My anger is very powerful, and my anger helps me to be a fighter when I need to fight. And it has protected me. It has inspired me. There have been so many moments, even as a female entrepreneur, when somebody has told me, you know, pipe down, ambition is not appropriate for women, Be satisfied with what you're getting, even though I know other people are being paid more for the same work, where I relied on the wisdom of anger to say no. Right?
Kris Carr
00:31:13 - 00:31:41
And so I don't want to vilify it. And yet, I definitely need to learn more about it because it'll be a go to emotion for me if I'm not careful, thoughtful, inquisitive. My grandmother also used to say that emotions like anger and grief specifically were unbecoming for women. And she came from a very different time. Right?
Kris Carr
00:31:41 - 00:32:14
And so the chapter on anger is called Becoming, Unbecoming. And when I started to explore it more, and I have in my own therapy for many years, but actually starting to explore the mechanics of anger, almost like, you know, you're approaching a research project, is that many people say that it's a signaling emotion. Right? And it's signaling to something else. It's like the tip of the iceberg is what you see, but underneath of the iceberg is so much bigger.
Kris Carr
00:32:15 - 00:32:30
And so what is it signaling? What is it trying to point out to us? Sometimes it can be injustice. Sometimes it can be extreme pain. Like anger is saying, oh, this is not okay.
Kris Carr
00:32:31 - 00:33:10
And anger is also very protective. And so for me, if grief was something that felt so scary and so destabilizing. You know, there's a reason why we go into fights, light, or freeze because it's like a physical manifestation of us protecting ourselves. If an emotion like grief feels so unstabilizing to many of us because, again, we don't necessarily have the tools for this, especially because we live in a grief-phobic society. Right.
Kris Carr
00:33:10 - 00:33:29
So few of us know how to talk about these things or want to talk about these things because we're afraid of how people will react. Then an emotion like anger is going can easily step in and help you out. You know, like, oh, I'm starting to feel these emotions. I'm starting to feel out of control. I start to feel so uncomfortable.
Kris Carr
00:33:30 - 00:33:42
And then all of the stuff that can bubble up as a result of that, people will judge me. People won't like me. People won't wanna hang out with me because I'm a big downer. Boom. I got you, buttercup.
Victoria Volk
00:33:44 - 00:34:05
There was one part too where you where you talk about making yourself small. I can't remember exactly how, how it went, but just to the, what you were just saying, how we make ourselves small, especially when we're trying to express anger and then we're told you're too much or you're too loud or, you know, be seen and not heard and all of these messages that we receive more commonly as little girls. Right?
Kris Carr
00:34:06 - 00:34:06
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:34:07 - 00:34:25
Do you see yourself as I mean, would you describe yourself as a child and like a free spirit, kind of wild, kind of like a poking the bear questioner, initiator of things, maybe initiator of other people? Do you just would you describe yourself like that?
Kris Carr
00:34:26 - 00:34:58
I think as a child, there was definitely a free spirit and a very creative little soul, and very imaginative, very caring. Somebody who's I hopefully still have those traits. Very connected to animals in nature. And I don't think I was a bear poker because I think I was very shy and very kind of like, I gotta figure out feel my way because the world isn't safe. It wasn't until much later in life that I became a bear poker.
Victoria Volk
00:34:59 - 00:35:17
Yes. Okay. That's what I was gonna get to because when you start coming into your own. Right? Because you had a lot of grief in your childhood. So I just I saw myself in your story, and that's why I asked that because, yeah, I just I felt like we're kindred spirits in a way.
Kris Carr
00:35:17 - 00:35:41
Yeah. Oh, well, that's wonderful. I mean, I think the more we don't know if you feel this way, but the more work that I've done to heal my heart and befriend myself and really, like who I am. And I think one of the greatest things that you can ever experience in this life is the joy of your own company.
Victoria Volk
00:35:39 - 00:35:39
Mhmm.
Kris Carr
00:35:39 - 00:35:41
And I really wanna park on that for a minute because people don't talk about it enough.
Kris Carr
00:35:42 - 00:35:53
I mean, getting to a point where you enjoy your own company is so big. We come here alone. We leave her alone. And we live in an epidemic of loneliness. We do need each other.
Kris Carr
00:35:53 - 00:36:00
We need community. We need support. We need our people and our true blues. But, damn, we need ourselves.
Victoria Volk
00:36:00 - 00:36:04
I think it goes back to what you said about self-soothing,
Kris Carr
00:36:03 - 00:36:03
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:36:03 - 00:36:04
our ability to do that.
Kris Carr
00:36:05 - 00:36:30
I don't think any of that matters unless we can do that, because all of it was temporary. You're always gonna reach outside of yourself.
Victoria Volk
00:36:11 - 00:36:11
Mhmm.
Kris Carr
00:36:11 - 00:36:30
And then when a relationship ends, it's gonna be so destabilizing. Because you never had that relationship connection with yourself first and foremost. And so to go back to your question, when did it when did I start to come into my own?
Kris Carr
00:36:30 - 00:36:49
It was more so when I said, I don't really care what other people think about me. I don't wanna be a jerk. And but I'm less interested in what other people think about me and more interested in that relationship and what I think about me and my ability to enjoy my own company.
Victoria Volk
00:36:49 - 00:36:56
I actually I'm glad you said that because I actually had, are you someone who enjoys alone time?
Kris Carr
00:36:56 - 00:36:57
Why?
Victoria Volk
00:36:57 - 00:37:18
Maybe you even need it, because that was actually one thing I wrote on there because I love my alone time. I need it. I love my own company. But this is a great segue into having more 4 legged friends than 2 legged friends.
Kris Carr
00:37:19 -00:37:19
Mmm..
Victoria Volk
00:37:19 - 00:37:22
And the fact that you, don't have children, but you had you know, buddy or dog, you talk about losing buddy your dog.
Victoria Volk
00:37:22 - 00:37:33
And I just kinda wanna talk about if you are open to sharing about the importance of the importance that animals played a role in your healing and as you were grieving.
Kris Carr
00:37:34 - 00:37:54
Yeah, they always will. They're so a big a big part of my life. And I've had a lot of fur children. And you've you know this because you are in this world. And so I remember the first time that I got the concept that the other side of grief is love.
Victoria Volk
00:37:54 - 00:37:54
Mmm
Kris Carr
00:37:55 - 00:38:23
And the more that we love, the more we're gonna grieve. But who wants to go through life saying, oh, no love for me because I don't wanna feel that pain? So taking on all these incredible companion animals, you know that at some point, you're gonna have to say goodbye to them. And several of my fur children were very instrumental at certain points in my healing. My first my cat.
Kris Carr
00:38:23 - 00:38:33
My dedicated my second book to my cat. My cat was the first person I told I had cancer, Kristal, I've got cancer. What are we gonna do? Right?
Kris Carr
00:38:33 - 00:39:00
And so she was a big part of that early journey. And then Buddy was a big part of making peace with not having children. And then here comes this big old hound dog who is, you know, near death, emaciated, we found on the side of a mountain while we were hiking and nursing him back to health. And thinking, wow, there's love all around if I just choose to open to it. It might not be in the form that I think.
Kris Carr
00:39:01 - 00:39:21
And it's in this case, it's a big old hound dog. But boy, do I love him. And life is still good. And, then most recently, my dog, Lola, who is probably my number one soulmate. And so she was there throughout my dad's journey and she passed after.
Kris Carr
00:39:21 - 00:39:45
And I think she stuck around because she knew that it would be so big for me. And I couldn't lose them both at the same time. So we have all these opportunities. And the reason why I write about pet loss in the book is because I was actually shocked by a lot of the grief books and grief literature that didn't either include it or dealt it dealt with pet loss in a way that felt very diminishing?
Victoria Volk
00:39:46 - 00:39:58
I actually just developed a pet loss program.
Kris Carr
00:39:50 - 00:39:50
Oh.
Victoria Volk
00:39:51 - 00:39:58
But it hasn't launched yet. And, because I've had clients that I've worked with where they were seeing, it was a single woman. She didn't have children.
Victoria Volk
00:39:58 - 00:40:17
She didn't have a spouse. Her family were in another country. Like she came here with knowing nobody and that her dog was her everything. And so people don't understand or even think about grief when it comes to pets. But it's like, we can just go out and get another pet and the things people say.
Victoria Volk
00:40:17 - 00:40:29
Right? And it just yeah. It's so this is why I started this podcast so people can learn. Right? So people can learn through people's stories of the import of all the different ways we grieve.
Victoria Volk
00:40:29 - 00:40:39
But even if you're listening to this and you, for whatever reason, can't have a pet, get a plant.
Kris Carr
00:40:40 - 00:40:40
Mhmm.
Victoria Volk
00:40:41 - 00:40:44
I see a plant in your background. I have one right on my shelf here. I started actually, that was one of the things I think naturally came up for me.
Victoria Volk
00:40:44 - 00:40:52
And as I was starting my healing was I just started accumulating plants left and right. Like, you know, it's nurturing something.
Kris Carr
00:40:52 - 00:40:53
Uh-huh.
Victoria Volk
00:40:53 - 00:40:55
You know, I think get a plant.
Kris Carr
00:40:55 - 00:40:55
Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:40:56 - 00:41:00
Think of yourself as a plant. Like, what does a plant need? It needs water.
Victoria Volk
00:41:00 - 00:41:13
It needs sunlight. It needs I think it goes back to what is that, doctor Emoto with the water and the rice, the rice experiment where you talk to it. And, I mean, you could talk to your plants. You talk to your pets. Right?
Kris Carr
00:41:13 - 00:41:14
Oh, yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:41:14 - 00:41:41
But none of those things, like, judge, analyze, or criticize you. So you can say whatever you want. And I think that's the different dynamic of that relationship is that and why the bond is so deep for so many people with their pets is that they feel like you said in your book, it's like it's like Christmas morning. Every morning, every day that you your dog sees you, it's like you could be gone 3 minutes. Like, I can leave and be gone for 3 minutes.
Victoria Volk
00:41:41 - 00:41:51
And my dog, it's like Christmas morning. I was perfectly how you said that. So, yeah, it's I think it's one of the most minimized losses, and so it is something that I'm looking to address. And
Kris Carr
00:41:51 - 00:41:53
I'm so happy to hear that.
Speaker 1
00:41:53 - 00:42:00
So I'm glad we talked about that. Let me look on time. Okay. So I'm just gonna can I just do, like, a quick run through of questions?
Kris Carr
00:42:00 - 00:42:02
Oh, yeah. Of course.
Victoria Volk
00:42:03 - 00:42:11
Okay. Maybe these aren't gonna be quick answers. I don't know. Let's see. I loved how you said life is a terminal condition. We're all going to die.
Victoria Volk
00:42:12 - 00:42:24
But how many of us truly live? And acceptance helps get you there. And I think you've really touched on that quite a bit, not as much of the acceptance piece, but I guess I'll ask you this. What does acceptance mean to you?
Kris Carr
00:42:25 - 00:42:48
Acceptance for me means that I accept who I am and what my needs are, and then I have my back. I'm not trying to be somebody I'm not. I'm not putting myself into a box that was not made for me. And, that's a piece of it, but also accepting when I'm going through a difficult time that this is what's happening. I'm not sugarcoating it.
Kris Carr
00:42:48 - 00:43:08
I'm not trying to slap on an affirmation, even though I think affirmations are very helpful. I'm accepting that this is where I am so that I can do the healing work. That perhaps some of that healing work will help me get to another place. But if not, I'm giving myself which exactly what I need, which is some heart tending.
Victoria Volk
00:43:09 - 00:43:14
And even if just for that moment, you feel better, I mean,
Kris Carr
00:43:12 - 00:43:12
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:43:12 - 00:43:14
that's a win.
Kris Carr
00:43:14 - 00:43:15
It's huge win.
Victoria Volk
00:43:16 - 00:43:49
As your dad was going through his cancer treatment, I'm just curious on this because I just I spoke with another end of I'm trained in the end of life doula. And I spoke to another gentleman just recently. And the big conversation was having your affairs in order and just preparing and all of that. And so I imagine, like, when you got your diagnosis and when your father received his, was that something that had you already is that something that you'd, like, made a mission to take care of, like, get your affairs in order? Is that something that your dad made a priority when you first diagnosed?
Kris Carr
00:43:50 - 00:44:14
When I was first diagnosed, I didn't wanna get my affairs in order. And I had there was a lot of frustration around my unwillingness to get my affairs in order. And it's one of the reasons why my biological father left my life again.
Victoria Volk
00:44:09 - 00:44:09
Mmm
Kris Carr
00:44:10 - 00:44:14
So I met him when I was 18, and he split again when I was not long after I was diagnosed. And so and I was partly around that.
Kris Carr
00:44:15 - 00:44:33
And so for me, it was like I will do this on my own timeline when I'm ready. I'm not ready to talk about this. And I'm not going to have it forced upon me. So, but, you know, obviously it's helpful to have these things in place. It's something that I'm working on now.
Kris Carr
00:44:34 - 00:44:55
I'm 52, and I really wasn't ready to do it. And for me, it was a psychological block. And now it feels like, you know, my husband and I get on a turbulent plane, and we own our business together, and we run everything together. And it's sort of like, jeez. Still a little stressed out that we don't have.
Kris Carr
00:44:56 - 00:45:29
I mean so it's like, let's Just take care of some of these things, especially because it makes whether you realize it or not, it brings you more peace and clarity and what not. It's also really important as our life does become shorter, because dying is a big job. It's a big job. And we, as a culture, we are the first to throw the big parties and get all the gear and the showers and what not, for when a baby comes into this planet. And it's a wonderful celebratory event.
Kris Carr
00:45:30 - 00:46:07
But dying is very complicated it takes a lot of energy and it leaves a lot of tentacles and yet it's so scary for many of us that we don't have somebody to walk through it with. And that's when a lot of stuff can happen, I think, in families too. A lot of undue stress and tension and discord and even, you know, estrangements and whatnot. So my dad and I talked about it a lot. At first, it was hard to talk about though, and I wasn't sure if he wanted to talk about it.
Kris Carr
00:46:07 - 00:46:24
And so I approached it very delicately. Is this something you'd like to talk about? And the answer was yes. And I worked on it with my therapist because I was afraid that I would fall apart and make things worse. And I said, I am willing to talk about these things.
Kris Carr
00:46:25 - 00:46:34
I might not always keep it together. There will be tissues. I might say the wrong thing, but I'm willing to show up. And he was grateful for it. And so we did talk about that.
Kris Carr
00:46:34 - 00:46:55
We did talk about his fears. We did talk about his wishes. And we talked about what he wanted at his celebration of life. There were absolute tears. When hospice came, they told us with him in the room, you know that this is not curative.
Kris Carr
00:46:56 - 00:47:11
We are making you comfortable. Here are the stages of what will happen. This is what will happen as your body starts to shut down. This family is what we're teaching you and how to support. I'd never had candid conversations like that before.
Kris Carr
00:47:11 - 00:47:34
It was terrifying. I was grateful that we were in the middle of the pandemic because I had a mask on, and I would just pull it up really high. So that nobody could see that I was like, my lips were quivering and I was crying under the mask and whatnot. Because I was so scared to have that conversation. And I know people who, you know, whose loved ones have said, I'd really like to talk about what I want you to have.
Kris Carr
00:47:34 - 00:47:43
And they shut the loved one down and say, I don't wanna talk about this. This isn't positive. Oh, don't worry about it. You've got plenty of time. La la la.
Kris Carr
00:47:43 - 00:48:07
That's all coming from that person's own discomfort, which I honor. But for the person who's dying or struggling with mortality that you know, may have less time than you, it can be very isolating, create a lot more loneliness and a lot more discomfort. So it's these opportunities that we have to really, like, grow up and show up.
Victoria Volk
00:48:08 - 00:48:11
Grow up and show up. Suck it up, buttercup.
Kris Carr
00:48:14 - 00:48:22
You know, you don't want to. Like, I didn't I really didn't wanna put on my, like, big grown up panties, but I was like, I can do it now. When are you gonna do it?
Victoria Volk
00:48:23 - 00:48:32
But it is. It's it's the ability to okay. These are my emotions. I'm just gonna park them to the side before I walk in the store so that I can be fully present and give my loved one what they need.
Kris Carr
00:48:33 - 00:48:33
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:48:34 - 00:48:36
And so that they feel heard.
Victoria Volk
00:48:36 - 00:49:09
And that is very difficult to do. And I think when you save those conversations for the death bed, that time could be spent having rich, meaningful conversations. And so I think it's the importance of us planning for ourselves ahead of time so that we can have those deeper conversations and we're not worried about the logistics after we're gone. I think that's the biggest service we can give our loved ones that we have power to do, I think.
Kris Carr
00:49:09 - 00:49:25
Yeah. The second intention so I wanna just I'll remind that you've when everyone listening, the first intention that was helpful for me, I throw it out if it's gonna be helpful for anyone else, is to lead with love. You know, like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to show up.
Kris Carr
00:49:25 - 00:49:50
What would love do? What would love say? What does leading with love look like? And then just do that. And then the second thing is an intention that I set for myself, and this really helped me in the difficult conversations that I thought I would literally implode or come undone or just like, evaporate in my chair because they were so scary and big and hard in my mind was, how do I minimize my regrets?
Victoria Volk
00:49:51 - 00:49:51
Mmm
Kris Carr
00:49:53 - 00:50:11
What's it gonna take for me to minimize my regrets? Am I gonna regret that I didn't have the courage to have this conversation when my loved one wanted to have it? Yes. I am gonna regret that. Is that fear of that regret bigger than my lack of courage right now?
Kris Carr
00:50:11 - 00:50:14
Yes. There's your answer.
Victoria Volk
00:50:16 - 00:50:19
The answers are in the deeper questions, really.
Kris Carr
00:50:19 - 00:50:20
Not easy.
Victoria Volk
00:50:21 - 00:51:03
You talk about caregiving and giving versus receiving, and being I loved how you said this, but being a giver you felt like nothing could ever be taken away from me. And you said, listen to the whispers before they become roars. And so just the act of like caregiving versus giving. And, you know, I think just in reading your story, reading the book, which I highly recommend everybody does because there's so many layers to yours to your book that I would love to cover all of those in this podcast. But can you just speak to a little bit for those who are in the caregiving role and people who have always been the giver, giver, giver, giver, giver, giver, and then they find themselves in the giving role.
Victoria Volk
00:51:03 - 00:51:24
And then like yourself where you're diagnosed and then you're having to receive and the challenge of that. And then you're having you're you're needing like, not needing support, but being faced with this grief of a different kind of grief right, with your chosen father. Again, here, I'm asking like, 3 questions in 1. Can you just speak to that giving versus receiving a little bit?
Kris Carr
00:51:25 - 00:51:42
Yeah. I think it's helpful for each of us if we struggle with receiving, to really get to the nugget of the why. Because the nugget of the why has freedom for us. And for me, it was actually really as a result of writing this book. Because when you write, you have to figure shit out.
Victoria Volk
00:51:43 - 00:51:43
uh-huh mmm.
Kris Carr
00:51:43 - 00:51:57
You have to be able to articulate it. You have to be able to understand it. It's not just an esoteric feeling or vibe that you have. And for me, I was like, wow. It wasn't until I wrote that sentence that pieces of me came together.
Kris Carr
00:51:58 - 00:52:15
Yeah. And I knew that somewhere, but I didn't really understand it. And it goes back to that core trauma of loss, of abandonment. So if I'm the giver, nothing can be taken from me. If I receive, something can be taken from me.
Kris Carr
00:52:16 - 00:52:32
So what does that hit? Big core wound for me. So if we if not everybody struggles with this, but if you do, you know, like, get to the heart of the tootsie roll pop. And you'd be surprised what's there. And the oh, I can spend some time with this.
Kris Carr
00:52:32 - 00:53:00
And then it becomes easier to receive because we need to receive when we're going through these difficult times. We need self-care practices. We need to keep our well not full because that's not possible. But not running on empty that you're going into burnout and then, you know, adrenal issues and physical illness and all the stuff that comes with it. So we're not looking for perfection here.
Kris Carr
00:53:00 - 00:53:41
I have the full tank, and I'm all spiffy, and I've just had a lifestyle makeover, and I'm living my best life. It's, like, not gonna happen when we're going through a difficult time. But, boy, do those difficult times make us grow and evolve and become people we really wanna be. I think just to button up self-care, understanding why we might have resistance around receiving, and then as caregivers, making sure that we're putting our masks on and we're taking care of ourselves so that we can be as resilient as possible, as stress hardy as possible, because it's a roller coaster. And I always encourage people to come to the day with as much as they possibly can.
Kris Carr
00:53:42 - 00:53:44
And we can't do that when we're on empty.
Victoria Volk
00:53:45 - 00:54:10
You talk about having 2 intentions for the book, like, for the audience, those reading it and for you to normalize conversations around the different emotions so that people feel less alone and crazy and that to heal the deeper parts of yourself as a result of this writing. And you kind of touched on one of those. But what did you learn about and heal for yourself while you're writing it and since the book has been out?
Kris Carr
00:54:12 - 00:55:20
You know, you write the book and then you think it's one thing, and then you talk about the book and it becomes something else.
Victoria Volk
00:54:20 - 00:54:20
Mmm..
Kris Carr
00:54:21 - 00:55:04
And, so the whole process is very illuminating. And I'd say my biggest growth edge has been my willingness to talk about really difficult things, even more difficult things than my own diagnosis. And you read that vulnerability is a strength, and it can be a meme and a TED Talk and all the things. But then I think for me, until I really allow myself to go to a more vulnerable place, And I did push myself in the book to tell the stories the way they were and not a polished version that would be more appropriate for Instagram, that I did find a real strength in that.
Kris Carr
00:55:04 - 00:55:17
And the strength in that vulnerability isn't a hard strength. It's a soft strength. That strength and that softness of vulnerability, something I'm still exploring and experiencing but really enjoying.
Victoria Volk
00:55:19 - 00:55:21
Do you have any regrets?
Kris Carr
00:55:24 - 00:55:51
My dad wanted to have a celebration of life on Zoom while he was still alive, in addition to the celebration of life that he had and we had when he was gone, and I couldn't do it. And I said, I can't do that. I can't do that. No. And it didn't happen, and I regret that.
Victoria Volk
00:55:55 - 00:56:01
Is there anything else you would like to share, or do you have a little bit of time where I can ask a few more questions?
Kris Carr
00:56:02 - 00:56:06
Yeah. I can definitely do a little more time? Yeah.
Victoria Volk
00:56:07 - 00:56:07
Okay.
Kris Carr
00:56:08 - 00:56:09
Maybe 5 minutes or so.
Victoria Volk
00:56:09 - 00:56:18
Okay. Let me just look here. I wanna make sure I'm picking the one I wanted to pick. Oh, yeah. This is one thing you hear a lot.
Victoria Volk
00:56:18 - 00:56:34
Like, especially after people pass away. They lost their battle to cancer or they're losing the battle. Did you have moments that you felt this or was this outside messaging? And what do you think about this messaging?
Kris Carr
00:56:36 - 00:56:58
I think every patient is different. It is not my preferred messaging for myself because I live with cancer, so I don't see that I'm warring with my body. I think that I have cancer in my liver and both of my lungs. Those organs need more support. Those organs are struggling.
Kris Carr
00:56:58 - 00:57:16
Why am I gonna beat them up? Why you know what I mean? I wanna learn more about them so I can care for them and see what they like and what they don't like. And, again, going back to that part of, like, amputating parts of ourselves. I was worrying with my body way before cancer
Victoria Volk
00:57:16 - 00:57:16
Mmm..
Kris Carr
00:57:17 - 00:57:20
of you know, other things I didn't like about myself or my weight or whatever it was at the time.
Kris Carr
00:57:21 - 00:57:36
Just always in a fight with my body. And it's like, gosh, this body does so much on a daily basis to keep me alive. Things I could never even wrap my mind around. It's a miracle. It's like I wanna be on the side of my body, not fighting against it.
Kris Carr
00:57:36 - 00:58:07
So that, again, does not work for me. I think my biggest pet peeve is when people who don't have cancer use cancer metaphors. Like, I don't get triggered by a lot of things. I'm not a you know, I'm not a I don't really walk on eggshells or things like this, but it does bother me when people use cancer metaphors of like, that behavior is a cancer or that person is a metastasis or you know, a lot of folks use that. And so I would say, don't do that.
Victoria Volk
00:58:08 - 00:58:08
Mhmm.
Kris Carr
00:58:09 - 00:58:13
Doesn't feel good for people who actually have cancer.
Victoria Volk
00:58:13 - 00:58:23
Right. Thank you for sharing that. What is something about you that many people don't know? It's not in the books. You haven't said it before.
Victoria Volk
00:58:23 - 00:58:28
I guess you answered maybe the one regret. Maybe I have I don't know if you've said that before, but
Kris Carr
00:58:28 - 00:58:43
No. I've never said that before. People don't know about me. Well, I have said a lot of things about me because I do use my stories. My teaching method, I like to teach through stories.
Kris Carr
00:58:44 - 00:59:02
Well, I have been into Budweiser Super Bowl commercials.
Victoria Volk
00:58:47 - 00:58:47
What?
Kris Carr
00:58:47 - 00:59:02
In my previous career as an actor, and as somebody who did a lot of TV commercials and a lot of advertising, I was into Budweiser Super Bowl, bowl commercials.
Victoria Volk
00:59:03 - 00:59:04
That's pretty cool.
Kris Carr
00:59:06 - 00:59:07
That's cool.
Victoria Volk
00:59:09 - 00:59:17
Too bad it couldn't have been, well, the Budweiser well, it was I thought the best one this past Super Bowl was the Dunkings. Dunkings.
Kris Carr
00:59:18 - 00:59:27
That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I usually watch the commercials because it was just, like, a very big part of my career but I didn't watch them this year. But this really is kinda like the Oscars of advertising.
Victoria Volk
00:59:27 - 00:59:27
Yeah.
Kris Carr
00:59:28 - 00:59:28
So
Victoria Volk
00:59:29 - 00:59:39
that's that's very cool. Okay. Well, I will leave it there. I think that's a fun. We'll leave it on a fun note.
Kris Carr
00:59:39 - 00:59:39
Yeah
Victoria Volk
00:59:39 - 00:59:53
And, because if I ask another question, it's gonna be a deep run, probably. So you just have to read the book, my friends, because all the questions I'd probably ask her in the book. Anything else you would like to share, though?
Kris Carr
00:59:54 - 01:00:08
No. Thank you so much. This is a beautiful interview, and I'm so appreciative of the places that you took it. I really love having these transparent, honest conversations. Again, going back to how have you grown?
Kris Carr
01:00:08 - 01:00:16
What have you learned? And these are the conversations I wanna have. So thank you for allowing me to have one with you and with your community.
Victoria Volk
01:00:17 - 01:00:26
Thank you. I purposefully did not watch any of your other podcast interviews or listened to anything else because I just wanted to stay in my own lane
Kris Carr
01:00:26 - 01:00:26
Yeey!
Victoria Volk
01:00:27 - 01:00:29
because I can't let's see. Like, I have so much did you see the highlight?
Kris Carr
01:00:29 - 01:00:31
Oh my gosh.
Victoria Volk
01:00:31 - 01:00:59
I don't know why I do that screen like that, but there's so many. I've highlights and doggy ears, and it just really I really enjoyed the book. If people are uncomfortable with grief, I think it's a wonderful story. You again, like you said, you I think teaching through story is the best way to share information. It's something I think I personally need to do more of.
Victoria Volk
01:00:59 - 01:01:20
And so thank you for writing this book. I think it's wonderful for people who are going through something that can maybe see a different perspective through a lens of someone who's been living it for so long in so many different ways.
Kris Carr
01:01:17 - 01:01:17
Mmm
Victoria Volk
01:00:17 - 01:01:20
It's a great example of grief and the many faces of it. So thank you.
Kris Carr
01:01:20 - 01:01:21
Thanks, Victoria.
Victoria Volk
01:01:22 - 01:01:24
And where can people find you?
Kris Carr
01:01:24 - 01:01:34
You can find me at kriscarr.com. You can find me on Instagram at @crazysexykris, and the book is available anywhere books are sold.
Victoria Volk
01:01:34 - 01:01:42
And I will put links in the show notes. Remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.