Moving Forward Instead of Moving On

“Life is not just the beginning and the end,” says Nora McInerny. “It is all of these tiny things in the middle.” McInerny hosts the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking and is the author of It’s Okay to Laugh, The Hot Young Widows Club, and No Happy Endings. She’s hilarious. This episode is her very honest conversation with Elise Loehnen about grief and loss. Which also manages to be funny. McInerny tells her love stories. Some of them are about her first husband, who died of brain cancer. Some are about how she’s never really “moved on,” and why that is okay. Some are about grappling with grief and guilt and wondering what a “good” griever looks like. And some are about her relationship with her second husband today. And how, when she stopped trying to avoid grief, she felt it all—loss and love—most deeply. Emotions are never tidy, explains McInerny. And most of what makes life beautiful is the messiness of it all. (For more, see The goop Podcast hub.)