In How Learning to Say Goodbye Taught Me How to Live, you share how accompanying your best friend through terminal cancer helped you discover how love, loss, and grief can teach us to live more fully. Why was this an important book for you to write? 

In truth, I wrote the book in order to keep myself sane. When I heard about Rob’s cancer, I was so full of fear of returning to the grief I had just come out of that I knew I needed to do something creative. I tried to write a script, but it felt silly to write about having your dreams while your best friend was dying. So my mentor, Ophelia, suggested I write about what I was going through and share it with people who were also dealing with loss. So, I began to journal about what I was going through as I was helping my friend Rob deal with her cancer and then eventually the loss of her ex-partner, her mother, and eventually her move back to Texas. While I had no intention of sharing my private spiritual life with the rest of the world, clearly the universe had other ideas. So, I began to share what I was going through, including the questions I asked myself and the meditations and dreams I was having. While it was not my intention to share my spiritual journey, I have to be honest with you. It became quite uplifting to do so and felt as creative as if I were writing a script to produce. And it kept me sane.

How did the ordinary parts of friendship—phone calls, disagreements, laughter, and everyday decisions—take on new meaning as you both knew time was limited?

We already had a habit of speaking every day, so that didn’t change. What did change were the conversations about medical treatments and protocols.  This was not something I’d hoped to return to after my mother died, but for my best friend, I was willing to go there again. Of course we argued, or I should say we bickered; neither one of us really got our feelings hurt. We just had disagreements, but because of her illness, I really tried not to push my point of view onto her. I wanted her to make her own decisions about what she wanted to do, and that I would stand beside her, whatever she decided. While laughter was still part of our conversation, it became a little less so. However, we continued to work on our spiritual homework and to share what we were learning, which is something we had done for the last decade and 1/2. I think the spiritual homework is what kept Rob moving forward, to be honest. She was determined to learn what she could learn due to this cancer diagnosis. I miss having those daily conversations with her the most.

You are candid about your own controlling or judgmental impulses. How did facing those parts of yourself affect your relationship with Rob?

Well, hopefully I kept my controlling and judgmental impulses to myself. I knew damn well Rob didn’t need to know what I was judging or trying to control; she had enough on her plate. If I felt judgmental about what Robin was deciding to do, I would go into meditation and work on it with my higher self so I could learn more about myself and change what I needed to change inside me. I did the same thing around control. If I felt Rob needed to do something the way I thought she needed to do it, I would again go into meditation rather than putting it on Rob. I think the only moment that I allowed control to move me forward was when Rob lost her ex-partner and was living alone. I just knew in my heart that Rob could not live alone, which is why I reached out to her brother and asked if her father would be willing to take her in; if not, I was willing to. Rob was a bit upset with me when her brother called her and said she should move back to Texas, but I now know, seeing her delight at Christmas, that it was the right thing to do.

What would you say to someone who feels guilty because they aren’t grieving in the way they think they “should”? 

That sounds like a simple question, but it’s really rather complicated. I would first ask why they feel guilty, and depending on their answer, I would decide what to say next. But as far as people grieving the way they need to grieve, that is fine with me. Because, in truth, we all do things our own way; we all have our own path; we all connect to our emotions differently, so we’re all going to grieve differently. There are no “shoulds” in grieving. My grieving for my mother was very different than my grieving for my best friend, and my grieving for my father was very different than my grieving for my mother. I think the main point of grieving is to grieve the person you are missing, but more importantly, it connects us to a deeper level of who we are. My father’s grieving taught me about the fear of not having my buffer in place in the family. So, I learned how to move and feel safe without the buffer. My grieving for my mother was losing the one person who loved me unconditionally. What I learned while grieving her was that I could always connect to unconditional love inside of myself. And my grieving for Rob taught me so many lessons.  Basically, it showed me how much I had grown and how connected I had become to my self-love. I think the only thing I would say to somebody who’s feeling guilty for not grieving as they think they should would be this: However you choose to grieve, just know that underneath your pain or fear or hurt or anger or sadness lies the truth of who you are, and that is something worth looking into. Because I feel that when we look under our anger and pain, we will discover that we are glorious people who are lovable, loving, and loved.

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