ST Podcast Ep. 48: Embracing our Grief with Rachel Miner
On this powerful episode, Dr. Scarlet and Dustin are joined again by the ever-inspiring Rachel Miner. They discuss the joy found within grief, the power of emotions, and embracing our feelings in uncertain times.
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Superhero Therapy Podcast Ep. 48: Embracing our Grief with Rachel Miner
The information in this podcast is of a general nature, and is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. It should never be used as a substitute for mental care, medical care, or prevention, diagnosis or treatment of any other illness. Always consult with a mental health or health care professional before engaging in any activities promoted in this podcast.
Have you ever wanted to be a superhero? Join clinical psychologist Dr. Janina Scarlet and host Dustin McGinnis as they explore the psychology behind your favorite TV shows, movies, books, comics, video games and more. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
Dustin McGinnis: Hello and welcome to Superhero Therapy with Dr. Janina Scarlet. I’m your host Dustin McGinnis. I am a musician, filmmaker and all around fanboy.
Dr. Janina Scarlet: And I’m Dr. Janina Scarlet, clinical psychologist, author and a full-time geek.
McGinnis: So today we are continuing our special podcast series aimed at supporting our listeners through the Coronavirus pandemic. And today we will be discussing ways we can cope with grief during this hard time. We also wanted to welcome back to the Superhero Therapy podcast, our dear friend Rachel Miner. Thank you so much for your continuous light, during this dark time, Rachel. You are truly a rainbow beacon of hope and resilience and we’re just so honored to have you back on our show with us.
Miner: My goodness, I’m so grateful to be here. And so grateful for all that you both are doing, and all the ways you’re trying to help, and you certainly are there for me and have supported me in there, helping me, and you make me feel more rainbow light brightness in my life. [laughter] So thank you for that.
Scarlet: Aw, Rachel, we just absolutely adore you, and honestly, everything you’re doing for the world, for the community, always reminding people about finding light and finding hope and supporting one another, and your participation in Random Acts. It’s just absolutely inspiring and just puts me in the sense of awe. And so I just want to tell you how much I love and admire you and look up to you. So thank you for everything that you do.
Miner: Thank you. And I don’t want our listeners to be put off by just us admiring each other the whole time. [laughter] But I can say all the same things about you. And I think it speaks to, also, it’s so important right now that we all be that for each other. Like there’s no part of me that wants to give the illusion that any of this is easy, that I feel bright and happy all the time, and just wanting to do good. It’s a really hard time. The weight I think is landing on all of us, and so I think that we keep needing each other. It’s like, you know, trying to keep the balloon in the air. We’re going to keep needing each other to lift us at different points, and hopefully we can keep rotating around. So one of us be, you know, feeling like we’re sinking at that moment, but maybe in another can be there to lift them up and can trade places.
McGinnis: Yes, most definitely.
Scarlet: Yes, well said.
Miner: I mean, Janina, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been thinking a lot about – there’s so many points in history that we can refer to, that kind of helped me, is to go as a human race, we’ve been through much more trying times or times like this before. It’s certainly – in times of war and so forth, where we’re sharing this kind of communal grief. But also I’ve been thinking about The Deathly Hallows. Harry Potter.
Scarlet: Oh yeah!
Miner: You know that point where they’re listening to the radio station, they’re hearing reports of who’s died that day. And I feel like that’s sometimes, like, when I go on social media and there’s – important as it is that we celebrate those we’ve lost. It’s so trying. You see the number of people in grief, and the number of people we’re all grieving for and that we’re losing on a daily basis, is incredible.
And I know that one of the reasons why I’m here speaking about this too is I lost my father during this time and the grief and the combination of grief and fear and so forth. Just having my mother there in the hospital with him and her being exposed, and doctors literally having to rotate off because they were getting the virus, and it was just a very grief ridden and anxiety ridden time. And I think it’s really important that we cling to, also, those ways that we can lift our spirits and lift each other up. But I think one of the things that helps me is that fact that we as human beings have been through this so many times, and we are resilient. I’ve admired people who have managed to be resilient and positive through the times in history, and through the stories that we’ve heard like here in Harry Potter and wanting to be that and holding that up as a positive beacon for myself.
Scarlet: Absolutely. Rachel, thank you so much for sharing your experience and for offering this very safe space for everyone to process what they’re going through. You know, for so many of us, whether we’ve lost a loved one, whether we see people losing loved ones, you’re right. We’re sharing this common universal grief right now, the same kind of grief that we have read about and have seen on television. You know, sometimes watching like, let’s say, Harry Potter movies or Star Wars or you know, a Disney movie where we see some kind of like a worldwide disaster as, like, the climax of the conflict of that movie. And at least for me, I could never fathom something like this happening, and it’s here and it’s happening. But what’s really amazing to me is seeing the way that all of us together – I’m kind of tearing up even talking about this.
All of us together are holding hands with one another at a distance. You know, that I’m envisioning this energy where all 7 billion of us are holding hands, you know, and sending love and energy from one hand to another, from one human to another. Whether we’re sitting six feet apart from each other or on opposite ends of the country ou, opposite ends of the world. This is so human right now that we can sit with this devastating grief of again, either losing a loved one or seeing the trauma and the tragedy that’s happening while also feeling so much love for the universe and so much love for our fellow human beings.
Miner: I completely agree. Like one of the most magical moments of my day has been – my mom is home now and we’re grieving together. I’m very grateful to have her near me, but we also are quarantined from each other. It’s such a strange time for that, for so many of us. So we’re having to stay separate, even though I’m happy to know she’s safe and nearby. We FaceTime, and one of the things we do is at seven o’clock every night in New York City right now, everyone – all outside, open their windows and bang pots and pans and yell and whistle for the nurses and doctors or health care workers that are doing such an amazing job right now.
McGinnis: It’s so beautiful.
Miner: And so I get to be there with her doing it. It’s finding those moments of connection and it does, it lifts my spirits so much to see humanity coming together in that way. And I think we are all capable of that. And just to say, I do think everyone is going through grief, even if you have not lost a loved one, it does not slip my mind that like, just our lives changing in the way they have, and us losing the life that we’ve known. And that probably never coming back exactly in the same form. That is a form of grief. And you know, it’s something I’ve noticed being with my mom through this time. And you know, we do talk on Facebook, and watching her go through the grief because she and my father have been married for certainly my entire lifetime and beyond. So she has not known a life without him for decade upon decade. And I know this was going to be very, very difficult. But also it kind of is correct in a weird way that she doesn’t have the option to go back to some semblance of normal. It doesn’t have to pretend because we are all in the same position of having to create a whole new life with new rules. Does that make sense?
Scarlet: Absolutely. You know, I remember a few years ago when a dear friend of mine passed away, I remember feeling so eerie and so bizarre where I would go outside and I would see people laughing and celebrating, people who had no idea who I was. And you know, people absolutely unrelated to me, but it felt like such a disconnect because the lives of many people I knew were absolutely shattered, but the rest of the world kept going. And so that experience actually was so bizarre. And I’ve gone through that every time I’ve experienced grief in the past. But now there’s worldwide mourning and worldwide grief going on. And you’re right, it’s true. Whether or not people have lost someone right now, and in some ways there’s this common humanity experience where we’re grieving together. We’re all in this together. We’re supporting one another and as painful as it is, it’s also, you’re right. It’s the right way to feel. And I think that there can be some healing in allowing for that grief right now.
McGinnis: You both mentioned this universal grieving that’s going on, and many people might struggle with understanding why the pandemic can make them experience these feelings of grief. Can you both talk about that?
Miner: Absolutely. I mean, I think essentially, to me and, and Janina you’ll be able to speak more from an actual psychological point of view and you know the details of this better, but I can speak as just a human, that part of grief is the change of our lifestyles. Like I know for me, the selfish for losing my father is just not being able to speak to him, is not being able to spend the time with him. It’s not just sadness for him, because I know for him, he made peace in a lot of ways and we’d had those conversations, and that helped it be very healthy for me in that he made me feel very whole and complete. I didn’t feel like I had communications I hadn’t given him, but I still will miss – all the time, I think of things. I wish I could tell him and I missed that I can’t do that and I think that that is shared by all of us. We all now have lives that look very different. We can’t do the same things we were doing just a few weeks ago, and that to me is part of where grief lies, but then it’s how do you make it productive and positive, and to me that always is channeling it toward helping others, toward being there for others, toward creating a new and vibrant life. Like, for my father specifically, he was a teacher and that was so important to him, and really the most important thing, and I want to pass along those lessons and things he want to just share, and that makes me feel very light about it and good about it. And the same with, I want to take anything that I’m feeling and find ways to make it positive, which I know Janina you can talk about. It’s why we’re here doing this podcast. If this can be helpful to someone else, then it doesn’t feel terrible to me.
Scarlet: Thank you so much for that, and I absolutely agree that grief can show up when a change happens. A lot of times people think that grief is only appropriate when someone has died. The truth is all emotions are appropriate at all times, and all emotions are allowed at all times. Emotions are information, and when we experienced some kind of a loss, not only a death, but also a drastic change, for example, a loss of a job, loss of a relationship, loss of stability, loss of health, loss of the ability to see our family members, you know, and be in the same room with them, as many of us are going through right now. We do experience grief and grief can be complicated because it’s not just the experience of sadness. Grief involves severe emotional pain, and also anxiety and anger, and at times, hopelessness. And I think that for many of us, what we’re also experiencing is something called empathic distress.
What that means is, by seeing the suffering reflected in other people, even people we don’t know, we as empathic human beings might also experience a mirror of that emotion. In fact, we are wired – we are neurologically wired for empathy. We have what are called mirror neurons in our brain, which allow us to experience what someone else is experiencing as if it’s happening to us. For example, if we see somebody eating a lemon, we can taste a little bit of that sourness and tartness in our mouth. Sometimes even hearing someone talking about a lemon, some of you might notice your mouth watering a little bit. That’s what mirror neurons do. And it works on an even more profound level when we see suffering, when we see somebody in pain, our mirror neurons, activate the compassion and empathy centers of our brain to allow us to basically put ourselves into another person’s shoes, to understand what they’re going through.
And this is a very adaptive technique. Actually Darwin, who was mostly known for writing about survival of species, also talked about altruism. And I think he actually meant compassion by the current definition of compassion, where our ability to look out for one another, and support each other is the best way that we can survive. So if we’re experiencing empathic distress right now, it’s because we care. It’s because we love the humankind, even if we don’t know the people who have, you know, maybe shared their trauma, their losses, their experiences. But the fact that we feel this way means that we want to help. What can make this experience more painful ,is when we think that we are unable to help. And that’s where what you said in terms of pouring our energy into helping other people is so important. Many people feel that they’re unable to help if they’re not medically trained professionals.
But there’s so many things that we can always do. For example, people who are creative, just putting art out there, whether it’s a painting, a poem, a song, can be so moving for people during this time, to remind them of joy, and just checking on our friends are putting a supportive message out on social media. Maybe for people we know, or maybe for the community, or maybe for the world, can be really, really empowering. And all of us doing this together as a community, as citizens of this planet can be the very thing that we need to manage this grief together as a worldwide family.
Miner: I love, so love everything that you’re saying. And it’s funny because I will say to people when they say, “Oh, you’re doing so much to help others,” or whatever. I say, well, it’s very selfish, because I can’t stand to be around unhappy people. So I don’t want to be in a world with an unhappy people. So therefore it is absolutely a selfish thing that I want to help make the burden lighter for others. And I think that that, you know, speaks to what you were saying and in a silly way. To me all of my lightness and my happiness and joy in life comes from when I feel like I can alleviate that pain for someone else.
And in terms of what you were saying, one of the things that we’ve been working really hard at at Random Acts is how to put as many programs there, where people can help and where it doesn’t have to cost money. If they want to donate they can, but if they can afford to, there’s so many other ways that we can help. Like when our program that we put together specifically for helping the groups alleviating suffering from Covid-19 in so many ways, in all the areas of life that’s affected, is that we’re letting people nominate local groups that they’re seeing, that are doing good works, and seeing how we can get them funding. And that’s a way that you can participate in do something really actively good, that doesn’t have to cost you money. Because I think, you know, we’re all going through whatever we’re going through financially as well. And I think it’s super important if we’re going to survive this, that we know that there are so many other ways that you can help people, and spreading kindness is huge, and going to, I think, be the crucial factor right now because people will fall just from the grief and from the weight of that, and the shared terror of what comes next age etc.
And I think that we need to know that we live in a world that’s better than that. And on a positive note, I have seen that more in recent days than I ever have in my life. I’m someone who has always been bothered, and found it very strange that I could be at an opera house and everyone’s dressed the nines and whatever, and someone else might be starving in a war zone at the very same time. It’s bizarre. The shift in experience is always been very bizarre, that we can share this world and be so connected, but ignore our fellow humans suffering is very strange to me. So in a lot of ways this time feels like we’re actually evolving to something more positive, in that we’re very, very aware of the suffering we’re going through as a group, and everyone is going through, and I hope that we keep finding ways to leap, eat that for each other.
Scarlet: Absolutely. I agree with you. I’ve been seeing that similar unifying kind of an experience throughout the world. I have friends from all over the world, different countries from France to Italy to India, that I’m in regular communications with, and it’s amazing how we hardly ever had time for each other before, and now we’re all checking in on one another and just supporting one another and, again, like virtually holding hands with each other, and it’s so beautiful. I lived in New York during 911, and I had never seen New Yorkers be more kind to each other than they were during that time. I mean, I’m a very biased opinion. New Yorkers are always kind. I think they’re just busy. I’ve never seen more acts of kindness and compassion than I did for months right after 911.
Miner: I love that you say that, though. As a New Yorker as well, I completely agree, but also I saw the same thing and I was trying to describe that to my friends who I felt were maybe experiencing more pain and helplessness from 911, whereas being in New York, what I saw is, like, not only like the kindness but people re-prioritizing. There were so many people who took off work and were just out in the park with their families and things like that of just looking at what is important and what is not, and I feel like a lot of us are doing the same thing right now – is you know what really matters to us at the end of the day, and that’s a beautiful thing.
McGinnis: Most definitely. You guys were talking about empathic distress and this mirroring. There’s also this, like, internal grief that we find some times, especially in hard times that deals with memory and re-experiencing previous grief. Some people who experienced this, unfortunately, shame themselves for feeling this way, having this old grief resurface. Why do you think this happens, and how can we reduce shame around feeling past grief?
Miner: That’s a really good point. Again, Janina I think you’re going to speak to it more precisely, but I definitely think one of the biggest things that we have to do during this period of time is also be compassionate with ourselves. It’s something that I’m really paying attention to for myself, but also really trying to put out there, is that we all need to be forgiving that – like I think some people thought, oh, maybe you know, I enter this period of time and I should have all these goals and be achieving so much, and we’re stunned at the fact that as difficult as it is because we are weighed down by our grief and by the fact that the grief has triggered old griefs, and we have to, I think, except that we’re pushing through that and be compassionate and loving toward ourselves for that. I also allow myself to regularly sob. It’s one of the good things about being in isolation is I’m not putting that on anyone else. Just that I think it’s important sometimes to release that. And again, it’s knowing that I’m not falling into some darkness, it’s just that I need to let that grief come out and flow out so that I can keep functioning in other ways.
Scarlet: Exactly. So well said in terms of making room, making space for these emotions. I actually noticed that if I don’t cry like at least once a month, I’m having a lot of pressure. Like I’m holding onto a lot of tension, and you know, everyone’s different and some people need to cry more frequently in some people less frequently. But we are designed to release our emotions and express our emotions, and crying is one of the most cathartic ways of processing our grief. I think that many of our experiences, are cataloged in our brain, in our memory centers by categories and it’s almost like a magnet, when we are seeing something in the news or when we maybe learn about some kind of a death. We remember our own experiences of having lost someone. So again, our memories are almost like a magnet where one memory will pull all others that are similar to it.
This is adaptive because it teaches us how have we experienced this situation before. It might remind us what we need to do to get past it or maybe warn us about what things were not helpful in the past, and kind of prepare us for what to expect. So if you are experiencing grief right now, and you’re remembering a loss that you went through years ago, that is completely normal, that is completely understandable. This is something that most people worldwide are going through right now. And so if you’re going through this, please know that it’s okay to experience this. Please make some space for these emotions. Allow yourself to cry, and also reach out to loved ones if possible, in terms of spending some time together. One of the best kind of heart balms, if you will, is social connection. And so if it’s not possible to be in the same room with someone, we can very much, as Rachel talked about, FaceTime our loved ones or do Zoom calls with our loved ones.
And what I found is that having a connection through multiple sensory means is better than having a connection only through one sensory modality. So what that means is that a video call for folks that are able to see and hear is much better, and a stronger point of connection, than only talking on the phone, or only texting, for example. So if possible, trying to do maybe a video call with a loved one. Again, if you have the ability to do that, if you’re able to see and hear, if you’re able to have some kind of regular meetings with loved ones, whether it’s to process what’s going on or to talk about something entirely different, that can be extremely healing right now.
Miner: I love that so much. Another thing that I have thought about is that a lot of us bottle up our emotions and grief and so forth, and we use certain things to numb it and distract us. And a lot of those things have been taken away. So just the daily life things- I see people do this going out to parties, and distracting themselves socially, and going to the movies, and all these things can be ways to avoid having to deal with her own grief, and so forth, that we might be bottling up. And so I think it’s a very difficult time for a lot of people because all of those crutches and things that were coping mechanisms were taken away, and you’re now stuck having to confront grief and so forth, that might have been unconfronted for years. Does that ring true to either of you?
Scarlet: Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is where I think creating a balance between both creating space for our grief, and also, in to replicate the kind of activities that we did before as much as possible, through virtual tools can be really helpful. So for example, if normally you’d go out to eat with your friends, then having dinner with your friends over Zoom or Google Hangouts or FaceTime can be really helpful. If you like to dance, then maybe doing a dancing party over video, maybe watching a movie together over Netflix Party or over FaceTime where you can catch up instead of going to the movie theater can be helpful. In terms of making space for our grief, what I normally talk to my clients about is making an appointment for our grief. So what that means is on a daily basis, seeing a few can sit down for maybe 10, 15 minutes and allow any emotions to come up.
Maybe sitting in a place where you can be by yourself, where you don’t have to worry about anyone else’s reactions where you can feel safe and supported. And for some folks that might be the bathroom, and that is perfectly fine. Just allowing yourself to feel any emotions that come up. If you need to cry, allowing yourself to cry, maybe taking some time to journal or to process what you’re going through as an intentional practice. And that means at any other time throughout the day if grief comes up. It is okay to make that space for it too. You don’t ever have to shove it aside just because that’s not your kind of appointment time for your grief. But I do think having a set time to process any emotions that you have coming up can be very helpful for our mental health, and can allow us to find more grounding as opposed to just trying to bottle those things or push them away.
McGinnis: I have to add on a personal note that crying is such a vulnerable thing and I find it so beautiful. I often tell Janina if she has those moments where she says she feels like she cried, I was like, go for it, baby. Just cry. You have a beautiful cry face.
Scarlet: Aww.
McGinnis: It’s good to let those things out and be that vulnerable. And one thing that also came up while you guys were talking was, we are these complicated beings. We’re able to experience grief and joy and so many other emotions. How can we find joy even in the moments of our grief?
Miner: I’ll be honest, when my father was in the hospital and I was worried about my mother and I didn’t know what decisions I should make and how I should be handling all of this, that felt not healthy, cause I, I just was bottled up in this kind of, in between, I don’t know what I should be, you know, doing for my family and I couldn’t be with them and it was just not good. But now when I cry from my father, whatever, joy filled, it feels full of love and kind of joy, and kind of healthy in that yes, I miss him, but it’s also how much I loved him, is kind of bubbling out as well. To me, grief can be a joy filled proposition. There’s times where, like, I love when I fully cry and it feels cleansing and it feels healthy and it feels like I’m moving forward as opposed to falling back into something or you know, down into something.
Scarlet: So beautiful and so well-said. The truth is we, humans are designed for complicated emotions. We’re not designed to experience one emotion at a time. And I think most of the time we might notice that, even as we’re feeling grief, we might also feel joy. And even as we’re feeling joy, we might also feel sadness. The times that we might feel otherwise at the times that we’re purposely trying to suppress an emotion. And what’s interesting is that emotions are an all or none kind of deal. If we suppress grief, we also suppress joy. If we suppress anger, we also suppress exhilaration. And what that means is that, by creating space for all our emotions to exist, we’re allowing ourselves to better function as human beings. We can label our emotions and allow them and breathe with them and hold them gently. I talk about emotions as kind of a difference between holding a cactus gently, which can be a little prickly sometimes.
Some of our emotions are a little bit harsher than others, versus squeezing this cactus, right or sitting on it and pretending it doesn’t exist. Now squeezing the cactus, like clinging on to a certain emotion, like, very forcefully that will hurt. Sitting on a cactus and pretending it doesn’t exist can be really, really painful. And also not the way that would be functional. Instead, we can imagine that emotions are different kinds of cookies, so we can hold this, like, tray of emotions and we can imagine as, let’s sa,y joy can be chocolate chip cookies and maybe sadness can be macadamia nut cookies and all of these cookies, right, of all the different emotions can all coexist on this tray together. We don’t have to eat them, but they can all exist on this tray and we can hold this tray lightly. We can observe all of these cookies, all of these emotions, and we can allow for all of these cookies to be there at the same time.
McGinnis: I love how we went from cactuses to cookies.
Scarlet: Yes!
Miner: Yes! I love that. I love that at all. It’s one of the things that I love about being human. We share all these things, and again, it’s why I find it healthy to do things like this podcast, or to tweet things out, or whatever, is that I know that I’m not alone in what I’m experiencing. And it’s really important to remind ourselves of that. I think one of the funniest things to me about humanity is that, the thing we share the most is the feeling of being alone. And yet we’re absolutely not alone, in that every single human being has felt that way. And so I think that that is a good reminder that, it’s like, there’s always people that there’s just a shared experience, and there’s always people that, you’re really allowing yourself to experience it can help. The more that we’re able to share that and the more open we are, and the more we’re able to pull ourselves through, we can help pull others through as well. So that is one of the things that makes me proudly pull out that cookie tray, you know, is just the, I know that I can be healthier for others if I’m doing so.
McGinnis: Man, I want some cookies now.
Scarlet: Exactly. Yeah, we should definitely have some cookies afterwards.
McGinnis: So is there anything else that you’d like to say to people who might be struggling right now with grief?
Miner: There’s so much. I guess one of the things is, it’s a good time to, like, rather than getting stuck in trying to force some old paradigm of how life used to look, it is the most wonderful time to kind of open ourselves up creatively to how life can look now, and not try to deny any of the factors, not try to bottle it up or force it into looking some other way. It’s like, no, this is what life is, and let’s like, grow the good things,, and create a new existence for ourselves. To me that is the best coping mechanism through the grief is to be present and look at the existing factors, and find the beauty in those, and keep making more of that.
Scarlet: I love that. I would also like to add something that has been really helpful for me, that I would encourage folks to try if you’re interested, is to imagine that you are within your favorite story, whether it’sHarry Potter or Star Wars or Buffy or Supernatural or whatever you like, and you are now in the middle of the story, and you are one of the heroes of this story. And this is now the monster that you have to fight. And by monster,, I mean the pandemic and some of the big challenges that are arising from it. And you have a very important role to play. And that role means acknowledging your emotions and actually maybe even utilizing them as a source of your strength. We might not always like the source of our strength, but that is where strength comes from, is from our emotions. And then also by connecting with other people, by finding the way that we can contribute to facing this monster and helping the world.
Because the truth is, you are the hero of this journey, and every single thing that you do matters. And you know, maybe a decade now, there’s going to be a movie about this pandemic that we’re living through right now. And a hundred years from now, they’re going to be books and movies and documentaries, and they’re going to be focused on people’s stories. And a part of those stories will be yours, about what you did, whether they name you by your name or not, but they will talk about the thousands of people who contributed to the world exactly as you did. And you will be the person that they’re talking about. So remember, you are always capable of doing something. And so put on your emotions as an armor, as something you can wear. Maybe drape yourself in them and show up the way that you would want to show up to contribute to this world because you are the hero of your journey.
McGinnis: Wow, that was beautiful. I couldn’t help but imagine Lord of the Rings, Samwise Ganges, like little heroic reflection about why he’s part of this journey. And it’s just so powerful. I was getting chills.
Voiceover from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Sam: It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, The ones that really matter. Full of darkness and danger, they were sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing. This shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances to turn it back, only, they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding to, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.
Miner: I love that and I was funny, cause I was thinking of Samwise as well, but it’s – it’s something that’s so important – is I’ve studied history a lot, to look at how do we contribute the most positive change in our society? And the truth is, we might tell certain stories of certain people, but that is just a story and it’s because we don’t have the capacity ,mentally, to hold on to all of the millions of stories that went along with that, and often they were more instrumental in actually creating the change. So I think it’s really important that we know that yes, we can pick out as human being certain stories, so that we can wrap our heads around it, but the truth is it is every single person’s story, and you are the main hero and protectionist in this, you know, in terms of what’s important, and humanity does not go on. It does not continue to exist without your contribution.
McGinnis: Wow, that was beautiful.
Scarlet: Exactly.
McGinnis: This has been a very beautiful, powerful, enlightening podcast. We want to thank you so much for joining us again. Rachel, can you please, once again, provide us with the Random Acts link and things like that, where on social media people can find you?
Miner: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I was so grateful to be here. And Random Acts, is random acts org, or @randomactsorg on Twitter and RandomActs.org as a website. And I’m @rachelminer1.
McGinnis: We’re gong to go ahead and end this episode of Superhero Therapy. Again, my name is Dustin McGinnis – you can find me on Twitter @thevaliantgeek.
Scarlet: And I’m Dr. Janina Scarlet. You can find me on Twitter @shadowquill and @drjaninascarletofficial on Instagram.
McGinnis: Thank you all so much for tuning in. Stay safe out there everybody and remember that you are a superhero.
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