Ep #110: Grief: In the Workplace with Laverne McKinnon

Hi friends, welcome back. So today I have a very special guest. She is an old
friend and a former colleague of sorts. Her name is Laverne McKinnon.
Laverne is an executive and leadership coach who draws upon her diverse background in
entertainment and academia to help individuals and organizations overcome loss and
setbacks in order to rediscover their capacity for impact and creativity. She believes
that understanding and addressing failure and grief are crucial for building resilience
and going the distance in one's career. And the reason I'm having Laverne on today
is because last week I did a podcast on grief and it was about the grief of
losing my dog. And this week I wanna talk about another form of grief,
which is grief in the workplace. And this is something that has been really
prevalent, particularly in our former industries, Laverne and I knew each other as
former executives in Hollywood. She worked for CBS and at the time, I think I
worked for USA Network. And since then we have both become coaches and often our
clients are based in Hollywood. So with that, I would like to welcome Laverne.
- Thank you so much. I'm so excited and delighted to be here. - Me too, me too.
It has been a long time since I've seen you, although we have stayed in touch for
decades now in our various careers. And I just love seeing your face and I'm so
happy you agreed to come on the podcast. - The topic is obviously like so near and
dear to my heart and it's a taboo to talk about loss and grief in our careers
because it labels us, right? - Totally. - Yeah, not being viable or desirable.
So yeah, I'm excited to be able to like rip apart some of the shame of setbacks.
- I love that. I would love to start kind of at the beginning a little bit where
you developed your brand, but also the term about grief in regards to job loss.
Just tell the audience a little bit about your backstory and how you came to doing
what you do now, and then we'll dive into the state of affairs currently.
Well, I'm going to talk about this as if it's so easy for me, but it's only from
repetition that it's become easier. In 2006, I was fired from a high -profile job in
the entertainment industry. I was head of drama development at CBS and I'd been with
the network for 10 years. And I had a pretty rapid rise there. I was promoted
every 18 to 24 months. And then I was fired. And I did not see it coming.
It really pulled the rug out from underneath me. And even though I, after that was
able to get a handful of high -profile gigs, I was still struggling so much with
feelings of depression, issues in terms of cognition, appetite loss,
all sorts of things that were happening. And it wasn't until probably 10 years after
I was fired, and when I had become a coach, and I was working with clients who
were having career setbacks and really struggling to find their motivation and their
passion, they've lost their confidence, that I discovered that we were grieving and
that just opened up a whole new world and as soon as that label of like naming
what the experience was, it did clarity to this is why I feel this way and now I
understand that I need to to embrace a mourning process in order to be able to
reclaim my confidence, my resiliency, my esteem. And just before anybody kind of
jumps in, because grief is such a large pie, and there's so many ways to slice it.
As I said, last week I was talking about the grief of just losing my dog, who was
my constant companion for 12 years. And when we grieve, it's easy to be like,
well, you don't grieve over losing a job, you don't grieve over losing your...
The answer is there's no judgment on grief. Like, grief is what you feel about
something. And what might seem like nothing to somebody is everything to somebody
else. So can you talk a little bit about that? Like, when you were able to finally
say, "Oh, I've been grieving." - Well, first off, I'm so sorry for the loss of your
dog. And it is, it's truly, truly heartbreaking. You're your constant companion for
12 years and I really appreciate what you said in terms of how there's a uniqueness
to grief that we all grieve different things for different reasons because grief is
the natural normal response to any type of loss. There's a belief system in our
culture that grief is really relegated to death and it's not because grief is a
reaction to attachment. So we may be attached to a loved one.
We could also be attached to our jobs or aspects of our job that really our jobs
have become our identity. And that's oftentimes what's at the core and losses in the
professional realm. Yeah, these strikes. Wait, who am I? And then it also strikes at
purpose. like, "And why am I here? What am I doing?" - Well, and Hollywood has a
particular affinity for creating emerging identity with your job.
It's not that different, I always say, than the military in that you get these
title bumps and you get like badges of honor, if you will, whether that's awards or
corner offices or title increases or visibility or publicity. And so what happens is
you kind of lose yourself oftentimes in the world of entertainment because there is
this reinforcement loop of you're only as important as your last promotion or your
last hire or your last hit show or hit song or fill in the blank. Do you agree
with that? Do you think that there is an element of that? I think it's greater
than an element, I think it's part of the culture. And to caboose off of what
you're saying and specific to the entertainment industry, but also other industries
that really prize innovation is entertainment is an industry that's built on
creativity. The best creative comes from taking risks and inherent risk is failure
and loss. However, as you stated, the entertainment industry is so built on the
identity of, "Oh, I have hit after hit after hit after hit." What happens is people
become more and more frightened to take creative risk, because what if I fail and
then I lose that identity as someone who is a hitmaker, and then ironically for the
entertainment industry, our content then becomes even more and more homogenized because
we only want to go after ideas that feel safe. That's so true. It's so true. Oh,
my God. - That is so true. And such an astute distillation of creative communities,
which is innovate, innovate, different, take risk, take risk, take risk. And then
once it's working, don't change anything. It's working until it's not.
- Yeah. And so thus we have, you know, reboots of TV series from,
you know, 1958 or 1972, because we're just really searching for that. And then when
people fail, which is, again, we're encouraging people to be innovative, to take
risks, to be creative. But then when they fail, we analyze them.
Yeah. So let's, I mean, we might lose some of the audience in having this
conversation because it is so narrow. But let's just talk about because we both came
came from entertainment and we both tend to serve that clientele. I can speak for
myself for the most part because that's who knows us so well. Can you talk about,
at least from your end of the coaching business, what has happened in entertainment
in the last six years in terms of the massive wave of grief of job loss?
I can point this where we're currently at right now where I saw a statistic a few
weeks ago that the unemployment rate in the entertainment industry is somewhere
between 20 to 25 percent, where the national average is about three and a half
percent. So there is a massive contraction within the industry,
and I know other industries have experienced this as well. And it goes back to
lockdown, where production slowed and then stopped, and then business models at the
same time were shifting and changing because so many entities were coming into the
streaming business and all of them were the same eyeballs. Massive consumer confusion
of, wait, I've got a Netflix subscription, I've got my Amazon Prime, et cetera,
et cetera, and people were very confused. And so the turn rate in terms of
subscriptions is quite high. It's like the dirty little secret of the streaming
business is the churn rate. And then we started to come out of the lockdown.
And then last year in 2023, we had a writer strike and an actor strike.
And it halted everything. And there's so much loss of a way of life,
a way of how projects were sold, put into development, greenlit,
and now this all so fundamentally changed. - Yeah, I mean,
I was in television for 33 years and the last five are unrecognizable to me.
And I'm, you know, I hear about it every day 'cause I'm on the phone with writers
and producers and actors. I can't get over that five years changed more than 30.
It was fast and furious. And so I imagine like me, you're getting a lot of people
who have either been laid off, downsized or fired, depending on what the nature of
the circumstance is. And they're coming to you, what do I do? Next?
What kind of... Yes. What are some of the key things that are coming up for you
in your business? Yeah, it's all about uncertainty and the loss of certainty because
even if you didn't like the system, you still knew what the system was and now we
don't know what the system is anymore. And so, my clients do primarily come out of
entertainment and tech. And the question for many people, because tech is also going
through a really scrunchy time as well, is do I stay? Do I leave? Do I double
down, do I need to go back to school? What are my transferable skills? If I do
want to pivot, how long is it gonna take? Am I gonna have to take a step back?
Do I need to sell my house? And even like larger existential questions as well that
really go back to like, who am I and how do I fit into this world right now?
- Yeah, exactly, exactly. And to your point, if it's somebody who's relatively young
or middle -aged, there's a question of, can I pivot? Will there be room for me?
If it's somebody who's older, who was maybe not ready to retire, and I'm speaking
50s, 60s, even 70s because we know that even Norman Lear was actively writing and
producing in his late 90s. So the entertainment industry has a long runway for
people if you're prolific and productive. I mean, it is possible. But all of a
sudden, with this contraction and shrinkage, there isn't a lot of ropes to swing to.
So what often is the advice you give to somebody who is suddenly like we've both
experienced, either downsize laid off or something at some point in their career,
when that happened to you, it was devastating emotionally, but you were not out of
runway. You were young and you were vital and you had a million friends and a
million connections, you were beloved, you're creative, you had so many paths, you
could go executive, you could be producing, you could do this. So 2006, there was
no contraction. But in 2024, there's a lot. So what advice do you often give to
people who are maybe at the almost end of their career and there's no room back
in. That's such a powerful question. And I typically approach it from three different
perspectives. It's the spiritual perspective, the strategic perspective, and then the
tactical perspective, the clients to be completely transparent that have the most
success when working with me in terms of a it, will allow us to do the spiritual
foundational work first, because not just with an entertainment, but in the West,
again, we identify so closely with our jobs and derive our sense of worth from that
identity. And so we need to really flip the switch and look at our foundation, look
at our values, like understand what our purpose is, because our jobs and our careers
are not our purpose, they're a manifestation of it. And so if we're looking for
external factors to give us that sense of validation, we're going to constantly come
up short. So doing that spiritual work and then being able to identify limiting
beliefs, like I had a belief like, well, if I just work hard enough, eventually
it'll pay off. And while maybe there's some truth to that, it's irrelevant today.
It doesn't matter how hard you work. It's like, Yeah. They're just so far fewer
jobs available, which is a hard truth. Yeah. Once we do that spiritual work, and
then we can focus on the strategic part that flows from the spiritual, because when
you're connected to your values and your purpose, then you can start to look at the
landscape and say, "Oh, wait a second. Like, I have a number of clients who have
been executives or producers who have amazing project management skills. Project
management is a skill set that can be translated to many different industries. And
so then we can start to open up the lens and look at, okay, strategically, what
industries make your heart -pitter pattern? Like some really fundamental questions like,
do you really love living in Southern California or New York or whatever? Are you
open to moving? How does that honor your values? And then we start to get really
tactical in terms of how to revise the resume, how to update the LinkedIn profile,
how to start scheduling informational interviews, how to translate those informational
interviews into job opportunities. I have so much more to say, but I'm going to
stop there. No, I love all of it. And I would say, I don't know if I would have
identified it as spiritual, but maybe I would have gotten there eventually. I would
say I start in the same place, which is I start in what can you control? What's
the piece you can control? Which is first your mind. How you think of yourself and
how the title or the form or title or job does not define you. Yes,
it is a calling card on your resume. And yes, it does give you the confidence that
you achieved whatever level you achieved. But I always start with the work
internally, which is like getting to know yourself. And I love what you said about,
you know, what other industries, what other things make your heart pitter -patter. You
did a great podcast. I don't remember what it was, but about manifestation. And you
talked about how it's like, yeah, that internal work of like, what is my self view?
What is my worldview? And I thought that was so, so powerful. And sometimes I know
people are like panicked. It's like, I got to get a job, I got to get a job, I
got to get a job and they want to leapfrog over that. And it's absolutely possible
to get another job. And I know that you feel the same way. It's like, how are we
really building something to sustain long -term success and fulfillment?
Because that's what's going to show up again in whatever other job you have. If it
starts becoming fear -based of, I have to have this job or this identity or this
title to feel worthy, that'll show up in the work and it'll be fear -based work.
Well, it's actually two different tracks, I think. I think there is the financial
piece, which is like, I have to pay my mortgage now. And I always say, okay, so
let's talk about brass tax, like how much money is left or how much money do you
have access to? Like if we're talking about emergency, I need to pay my mortgage, I
need to feed my children, that's a different conversation. But if it's no, I have a
cushion or I have a runway, then my next go to is the spiritual. Like,
let's talk about what would make you happy. Yeah, it's that being able to recognize
like what's a crisis and what's not a crisis. And here, obviously, like it can
trigger the primal parts of our brain. And It's the ability to stay grounded and to
be rational and logical. And so I think that question of just being very honest and
realistic of, okay, where am I truly at? Am I truly out of financial runway? What
is the ticking clock? Because sometimes our brains get hijacked and we can't see the
truth. That's so astute of you to point out. I have had clients who live almost
paycheck to paycheck, and I mean truly, and not necessarily in entertainment. I'm
talking about all walks of life. And when they lose their job,
their focus is, of course, to just do whatever it takes to meet the needs of their
family immediately. And they'll do gig income. They'll drive DoorDash, they'll drive
Uber, they'll go apply for a job at Starbucks to bridge the gap. And there's a
real can -do spirit about someone who is always in that mode of like,
"I can make money. I mean, this was unfortunate. I lost my position, but I can
make money and I will get back there." And I've had other clients who have come to
me and they've lost their entertainment jobs. And I'll say, "Are you in danger of
losing your home and having to pull your children out of private school or whatever
luxury you're used to. And they'll say, "No, no, no, no, I still have a lot of
money." But the mentality is, because the spending is so great, the expectation of a
lifestyle is so great, that the thought of not being able to just have disposable
income is almost debilitating to your point, like they lost all perspective.
And I'm thinking, but I have these clients who live paycheck to paycheck who aren't
even worried. They're like, I'm ready to go. I've got something else lined up. And
then I have these ones who, as you know, have resources like a small country,
and it feels like they're starving to death, psychologically speaking. It's really
interesting. It really is. And I don't want to take us too far off topic, but I I
just wanna share that as part of my morning process of having lost my job and
other various career setbacks that I had to look at my relationship with money and
do a lot of work around it because I think part of the community and the culture
that I have been living in for the last couple of decades really Abundance, yes,
and abundance now has come to be a dirty word for me It keeps me in a place of
striving that I'm it's never enough I'm not good enough because I can't get enough
and there's an amazing book that you may be familiar with by Lynn twist About
efficiency. Oh and so it's this concept of having enough and and that we are
sufficient, and that when obstacles and challenges come our way, that we are
sufficient that we can deal with them. And it's just, it's such a, it's called the
soul of money, is what it's called. Oh, I did read it. Absolutely. Absolutely. So
amazing, because I do feel like when we're talking about grief in the professional
realm, it does come quite frequently with a loss of income. And again,
in the West, it's like we so closely identify ourselves and our value with how much
money we make. Yeah. Yeah. So going back to this issue of grief,
and I don't want to spend too much time in what was 2006, but just in terms of
acknowledging people who maybe have been downsized, lost their job, even quit, by the
way, there is grief in quitting a job that's either toxic or not aligned with your
values. But there's grief. And sometimes people who don't even want to work in that
job anymore because their boss was difficult or the volume was too high or the
culture was bad or they were underpaid or undervalued or undermined whatever their
circumstance was, they don't interestingly enough, lean into the relief,
and they lean more into the grief. And it's fascinating. So I'll work with clients
who like, I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my boss, I hate
everything. They don't value me, they don't use me, they abuse me and then they get
laid off. And then it's the wanting of what wasn't reciprocated.
It's almost like having a toxic romantic relationship leave you and instead of
feeling relief that you're free to move on, you settle into the grief and almost
canonizing what was or the ego is so damaged that the focus is much more on the
grief. Do you see that? - I'm specifically thinking about one client right now who
was really unhappy in their position. And this was about,
I want to say like 18 months ago or so, made the decision to leave and was not
able to access that sense of relief. And what we really uncovered was that it was
this attachment to the identity that the role and the title had. So even though it
was his choice to leave, he didn't recognize what that meant,
again, in terms of his own identity. It over -indexed. - Yes.
- And then, of course, there's negativity bias that we, as human beings,
are programmed for on a primal level to focus on the bad so that we can prepare
for it and that allows us to feel safe, and so my client went right from quitting
the job to then panicking about what's next, then how can I replace that? Yes.
I've had many of the same, and I guess we hold space for their grief,
right? Yes. But I think that, and again, with grief, so often there's this shadow
work of relief, right? Or the other way around. And I know that when I've watched
people actually even in human relationships, like when somebody's lost a parent and a
parent was maybe very difficult, either drug addict, alcoholic,
narcissist, bipolar, any of those things, or just had a very debilitating illness
like Alzheimer's where they weren't even And the grown up,
the grown child, the adult child, is struggling like crazy trying to manage their
toxic parent. And they're like, they're so toxic. They are taking all my time. They
are emotionally abusive. They have been my whole life. And then when they pass away,
there's no sense of relief. There's just grief and guilt. Yeah, and this is so
interesting because there's a loss in terms of that maybe one day the relationship
could have been better, that maybe the child could get their needs met.
And so when that person dies, there's no more hope for whatever it is that person
was longing for or hoping for. And so, I also think that relates as well in the
professional realm too, which is that there's a door that's closed when your project
is defunded or whatever thing you're working on sees a light of day and if it's
not well received or if there's a job loss, is that a door is closed that allows
for a hope to have continued to blossom And that's such a significant loss.
It goes into that category of existential. - Yeah, so that's sort of what takes over
the relief button is this idea that whatever the individual was hoping for,
even if it was unconscious, it's now no longer available. There is no reconciliation
or approval or unconditional love or promotion or, you know.
- Yes, exactly. - Yeah. - Interesting. Really interesting. Do you know Elizabeth Kubler
-Ross's Five Stages, I'm sure you do, Five Stages of Grief. Do you adhere to that,
those five stages, or do you think that there's a lot of gray area in them? - When
she came up with the stages, she intended them to be linear? Okay,
I love that word. Yeah, and they were also observations that she had made from
working with a particular group of people who were experiencing death.
And now people, because we so long for A to B to C equals,
I'm feeling better. Yeah. You know, as humans, we just want that certainty and the
clarity, but it isn't linear. And they bounce all over the place.
And then there's also a whole other host of feelings that are not just about,
you know, the denial and the acceptance, etc, etc. And there's a wonderful book that
was, I'm blanking on the author's name, but he actually worked with Elizabeth Coover
Ross on those five stages. And he wrote David Kessler. And it's called, it's And
it's the sixth stage, which is meaning. And it's really powerful of what is the
meaning that we are attaching to the loss and is that meaning helpful or hurtful to
us? So when I was fired, I took that to mean I was a loser and it took me 12
years to determine, oh, I'm actually not a loser. I was someone who was
Yeah. So I don't adhere to them as linear stages, and they only, to me, represent
a portion of the grief experience. But that's not to say that she did something
wrong. It's just that her work has been misinterpreted. Yeah. Oh, no, I love them.
And I talk about them all the time. And I love that reminder that grief is not
linear. I always say it's like an ocean. The tide comes and goes. And sometimes you
think it's safe to just wait in the water, but there still could be a riptide, and
you just have to be aware that it's still an ocean, right? So it's going to act
and react differently, and you have to learn to serve. Yeah, and I'm so glad that
you used the word "learn." There's a book that came out, I think it was last year,
Mary Frances O 'Connor called The Grieving Brain. Oh, I don't know that one. Oh,
it's amazing. And the central hypothesis behind it is that we need to teach our
brains that a loss has occurred because part of how we survive is that we become
attached and then our brain maps to that attachment. And when that attachment,
whether it's a person, place, or thing goes away, our brain, because we've been
patterned toward it, keeps looking for it. And so that's why memorial services,
funerals, planting a tree, like rituals, help teach our brain that the thing that
we're attached to no longer exists. And don't have those types of rituals. It's
like, "Oh, too bad. What else do you have for me, Jackie?" I was like, "Oh, what
type of job are you going for next?" It's like, there's no process to be able to
save our brains that thing is gone. Right. And if you retire,
presumably somebody gives you a retirement party or a going away party, although
there can still be grief after retirement. But you're right. If you're fired, laid
off, or quit, there's no party, there's no acknowledgement, there's no award, there's
no nothing to remind you that this is over, so the brain is still looking for
attachment. That's really interesting. Yeah. I highly recommend the book. I'm
definitely going to read it. I love those kind of books. Just if we can recap
before we wrap up. I'd love to know when somebody comes to you who is grieving the
loss of a job What would be your just very basic?
first steps to Acknowledging and then having them take baby steps to overcoming their
grief The first thing is really being able to identify the loss and talk about it.
Initially, when I was fired, I was like, "Okay, I've lost my title. I've lost my
salary. I've lost my benefits. I've lost my work family." Those are the surface
things. And what we need to do in the work is to dig underneath. What are those
intangible losses, loss of identity, loss of a sense of belonging, loss of
confidence, confidence loss of self -esteem. So by naming those losses, we can then
start to look at what is the meaning that we've created from those losses, and then
we rewrite the meaning to be helpful if it's been hurtful. And then we start to
find agency, which is regaining a sense of control, which is why I became a coach.
It's like, oh my gosh, I'm learning all of these things about rebounding from career
setbacks. And so I wanted to take this knowledge and this experience and help people
through this so that no one ever has to walk through life feeling like they're
broken or there's something wrong with them. And so being able to take control of
the narrative essentially.
Well, again, it's very much like heartbreak. When somebody leaves a relationship,
whether it's after one date not calling back or a long monogamous relationship or
even a marriage, it can feel like you're rejected, like you're not worthy,
like you've lost it. And we have to remember that there is plenty of other
opportunities to reconnect, fall in love, meet someone else. And that the work that
we have to do is not finding somebody else to validate us, but finding the work
within to validate ourselves so that we can go out as a whole person and then
attract the right match for us, whether that's professionally or romantically. Yeah,
that's so, so well said. I don't know if we have time for this, but I'm so
curious for you, Jackie. What was your transition like? Because you chose to leave
this wildly successful career in entertainment. Did you have a sense of loss or
grief? I did not, but I had a long runway to make that decision to pivot.
So like you, I was an executive and then I transitioned for the last year or two
of my career into being a producer, which was not for me. I love developing
projects, but I ultimately didn't like the selling part of being a producer and you
really need to be a pretty good salesman to be a producer. And so I, And I've
written about this in my book and elsewhere. I basically took a gap year of self
-discovery, where I was like, okay, I am 30 plus years in television and I'm curious
and I'm young, what else could I do? And I realized for me, I never loved
Hollywood. I loved the camaraderie of my colleagues. That was amazing. I love that
sense of belonging. I loved shepherding hit shows that was very validating and I am
very grateful for the income that I had. So those were kind of the three tent
poles that kept me going. But the politics of Hollywood was very unappealing and the
bureaucracy of Hollywood was very unappealing. I don't need to tell you because
you're in it. And I wouldn't say this amongst my colleagues. The people who I
worked across the board with were and are still close friends and dear friends.
It was more, you know, as you know, upper management had its prickly pairs
everywhere. It didn't matter, studio network, what have you. And I just didn't want
to stay in that for the rest of my life. I felt that environment was not aligned
with my values. I really loved helping people and I love people's stories.
And so I thought, well, where can I merge those too. And I have a background in
psychology, a degree in psychology. And then I started studying coaching and I was
like, okay, now I'm dealing with people's life stories, and I'm helping them.
And now the satisfaction is making someone or helping someone feel better about
themselves. And that's very much lined with my values. So that's kind of how I
found coaching was taking the skill set of listening and asking questions and
distilling very complicated information into digestible sound bites so that people
could move forward with very simple actions to taking agency over their lives.
I love the story so much. And obviously your listeners know you well,
But if there's somebody new who hasn't heard this is like a perfect example of Like
the pivot and like giving yourself some space and honoring your values and being
curious and that These things that you love are transferable and I'm so happy to
have this Story to continue to share with other of my clients because I think
having those like role models is like. Oh, yeah It's actually possible. - It's
absolutely possible. - It's absolutely possible. And it really is just a matter of
finding like, as you said, what makes your heart go pitter -patter? Like what are
the elements that you love and then what's out there that has some of those
elements? And nothing is perfect, but it's joyful. I love this career so much and I
love the people in it. So not only do I have my former colleagues from television
who are still close friends. I now have a whole host of colleagues in the coaching
business, but who I call regularly for advice, brainstorming and all kinds of things.
And I love that community too. So I'm very proud to have created another
professional community that I adore. Tell people how they can get in touch with you,
where they can find you, where they can follow you, how they can learn more about
you so that they can work with you. - Oh, thank you so much. Website is
laverneMcKinnon .com, and so that has all of my social on there. I do wanna flag
that I have a blog and what I call a blogcast, my version of a podcast on
Substack. Not everybody is on that platform, but I post weekly about topics,
issues within careers, a lot of resources, tools, skills,
and a lot of stories as well. So, Substack, Laverne McKinnon, website, Laverne
McKinnon. And I'd also just love to, you know, for anyone who's in entertainment
that's listening to this podcast and thinking about 2025, I do have two groups that
I lead that will start new cohorts in January. So going to my website, there's more
information there about both of those groups. - Oh, that's awesome, yeah. That's so
great. So you work with clients both in a cohort and a group and also individually.
- Yes. - Great, that's awesome. Well, Laverne, I just wanna thank you so much for
taking the time and talking about grief in the workplace and the professional life
as an element of the, again, what I refer to as the grief pie, It is not one
thing, and it's really, as you said at the beginning of this podcast, it is so
important to destigmatize grief when you've lost your job or left your job or left
your career. It's important to know that those feelings are the same as death or
breakup.
Maybe they're as catastrophic, maybe they're not as catastrophic, but the feelings are
the feelings, and it's okay to have them. And I think that the healing begins, as
you said, by learning to talk about it without shame. - Yes. - Yeah.
- Jackie, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. - It was awesome
to see you, and I loved reconnecting with you. It has been too long, and I hope
we get to see each other more. - Absolutely. - All right. And with that, I'll say
to our audience, thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you next
time. Bye for now.