Lauryn Bosstick On The Story She's Never Fully Told

0:00The following podcast is a Dear Media Production. Before we begin, this episode includes discussion of loss and mental health that may be difficult for some listeners. Please take care while listening.

0:33This is an episode that I have been avoiding doing for 10 years. I have been a content creator for 14 years and I wrote about it on the blog and I never have really talked about it. I've said snippets here and there. And I just have been called to do an episode on this because that it's important for me, for people to see this side of me. I think that there's a lot of misconceptions about me out there. And I wanted to give context to who I am because I think that giving context will help people to understand me. But also I think the holidays are coming up. And for me, and I know for a lot of you, the holidays are hard.

1:26They bring up a lot of Different things if you've lost someone, if you've lost a job or you've lost a person, if you've lost a significant other, it can be really hard. So I wanted to do an episode on this specific topic to maybe make people feel less alone. We've done this show for a decade and this topic comes up. People have shared their stories on this show about the same kind of subject matter and about some of the same circumstances. and you have a real perspective here that I think many are unaware of. You also have some real life experiences. And so I just want to say like you do what you want here.

2:04Like there's no pressure, there's no agenda. I think you speak how you want to speak. We're here to support you. I think it's going to be therapeutic for you. Yeah, I think the reason that I haven't talked about this subject is because I'm protective. You know, we were talking about this when we were walking on the beach. Like I'm protective of my dad. I'm protective of my sister. I'm protective of my mom's fiance. I'm protective of my aunt. I just don't want to tell someone else's story. And so that's why I'm hesitant to talk about it on a mic because I just want to be respectful. But I also want to be respectful to my mom and my mom's legacy.

2:50So it's important to me to handle this very thoughtfully. I don't want to just talk about things that have happened to me. I want it to be respectful for the people who are involved. I really made a conscious decision when I was young to not become a victim of this. And so sometimes when I talk about this area of my life, it feels like I'm not honoring that. But what I've realized is like, I can still let this experience fuel me, but I can also still feel loss. 100%. And I think that you're one of the strongest individuals I've ever met. And the fact of the matter is that you had something extremely significant happen in your life that played a major role in the way that you are and the things that you do and the way that you think.

3:44can, like I said, it'll be therapeutic for you to talk about it a little bit. I think so too. And I think it's important for people who have followed along and listened to the podcast and read the blog from the beginning to really have context to understand the whole journey. And maybe this can inspire someone who's going through loss right now. Maybe you're feeling, like I said, depressed during the holidays. So I think that I'll just sort of get into my story. So when I was 18 years old, my mom died by suicide and my sister was 12 years old. And my parents were divorced. They got divorced when I was 11 years old.

4:26And it was not easy. It was very, very isolating. And I think it's important to remember that at this point, there was no Instagram. There was no Facebook. There was no mental health awareness really at all. So it was a lot for an 18-year-old and a 12-year-old to deal with. We really didn't have any tools. My mom was amazing. I had a really great childhood. My parents were, my mom was truly the best mom that I could have had. And my dad is an amazing dad. He's still alive. And I had a really magical, special childhood, which makes this even more of a mindfuck for me because it's hard to have this beautiful, lovely, amazing childhood with all these special memories and holidays.

5:27And she would cook and big emphasis on details. And she worked with my dad, just like how I work with Michael. And she was funny and disarming and had a lot of amazing qualities. And, you know, the suicide was jarring.

5:49All right. Take your time.

5:57I just feel like it was jarring for not only me, but for my dad. It was jarring for my sister. It was jarring for my mom's fiance, Tom, and our entire family. And anyone who's experienced someone who's committed suicide knows that it's really, really intense to lose someone when you're not expecting it and to know that the person did it on purpose. So with my mom's suicide, she left a note and she knew what she was doing. when I look back when I'm an adult, there's a lot of signs that I see now that I didn't see that. Who do you believe your mother was before she took her life? She just was caring and amazing and funny and always reading, read like I read, always always a book in her hand she really tried to create a really special life for my sister and i but the strict one i should say i knew i knew your mother you did because we met again this is the joke but how would you describe her strict she was smart i knew she was a reader she was really into history she was the one when we got caught as

7:37it's gonna be hard for me too

7:44I think it's hard because Michael and I have obviously known each other since we were in sixth grade so he's been around for all the different arcs through this and I think that it's also hard because suicide really affects a lot of people. There is a feeling that I felt not only for my own sadness, but I felt guilt for my sister. I felt a lot of guilt for my dad. I felt like I needed to overcompensate and achieve to make up for the loss. And I think that it's been something that's driven me and it's really it's worked for me but I think it works until it stops and you have to realize like maybe the way that you got here isn't working anymore and what I mean by that is like it really sort of like dissociating and burying it worked for so long for me until I had my first child Zaza and then it stopped working and I had to find other tools but I do think it's important to talk about how suicide doesn't just you don't just feel guilt for the person that died.

8:50You feel guilt for the people around you. I felt like I had to make it better for my dad and my sister. One thing that we talk about a lot now privately, and one of the things about doing our show, we get called taboo sometimes, but a lot of the show has been talking about subject matter that is maybe considered taboo. And the reason I point that out is, I mean, you've always been an overshare since I've known you. And what I was going to say about your mother is when we got caught in the closet together by your father, when we were 12, your mother was the one that I was scared of. She was the ones like, Lauren's going to boarding school and Michael, I'm going to kick your ass.

9:32Um, but the point back to the subject matter is we talk about a lot of things that I think were taboos at a time of mental health or sex or things that society has deemed to be taboo. And when this happened to you and your family and to your mother, there was very little conversation happening in the world and in this country around mental health. There was very little conversation, especially around suicide. I don't think anyone knew what to say or what to do or how to approach you. Yeah, that was a really big problem. It's that no one knew how to approach me, so they didn't. And obviously, I wouldn't have known how to approach me either.

10:20But what ended up happening to me is I've always liked to read, but I became obsessed with reading. So a lot of you are like, how do you have time to read? Everyone always asks me that online. because I read for probably an hour and a half a day. And one of the things that truly saved my life at that time and guided me was reading. So I buried my nose in a book because I couldn't relate to my age. They were going to prom. They were getting ready for college. They were worried about small problems. And maybe there were people that weren't, but my friend group, it was very light, which is great.

11:00You know, even hearing you say this, you're right. Like we were all excited about the next chapter of life and going to school and gaining our independence and graduating high school. And you were having a much different experience. The contrast was, I can't even explain it because there was no tools for mental health at this time. I really want to explain this. There was nothing. I had to go out and I had to read. I remember one day like getting on, I want to say it was like. Ask Jeeves. No, basically. Yeah, it was like, ask Jeeves. And I was asking about suicide. And I remember just printing all this stuff out.

11:40And the problem with suicide and why it's so hard is that there's no answer. And so you start to rethink every single conversation and every single interaction and everything that happened before the person killed themselves. And you start to be like, well, maybe if I had done that, this would have turned out different. And you start almost gaslighting yourself into thinking that if you had picked up the phone or you had talked longer on the phone, you know, I spoke to my mom the night she committed suicide. I was on the phone with her. And I remember being 18 and wanting to go to a party. This is just really honest.

12:20I wanted to go to a party. I wanted to go out with my friends. I wanted to go to a house party. But you can't beat yourself up about it. I mean, no 18-year-old kid is expecting that and no 18-year-old kid doesn't want to go to a party when everyone's going to a party. I don't beat myself up. I just think I did, especially at the time, think, what if? And then, you know, my sister dealt with it very differently than I did. She shut down. And, like, I even feel like even comparing our experiences isn't fair to her. She was 12 years old. I got my mom for so many years. But like I said, I do look back on when my parents got divorced and after, and there were signs and signals that were telling me something was wrong.

13:12I just didn't know at that young of an age. I don't think I would have known what to do. and the older you get and the more children I have, because now I have three, it's hard to even still imagine how she even got to that place. And unwinding that and how she even got there has been hard. And it's something that I think about a lot. And I think when I had, like I said, my first baby and it was a girl, that was even more of like, I don't know if it's a reflection of just, oh my God, I can't believe that my mom did this at 48 years old. And the closer you get to even 48, it's like, oh my God, it's really something that affects you every single day.

14:11and I think that why the main reason I wanted to do this episode is because a lot of people who are listening have lost something and the holidays are coming and it's always hard but the holidays are especially hard because you really start to think about the person that you lost and so I think it's important to let people know that just because you think someone's some way doesn't mean they don't have a backstory. I don't even think I've ever asked you this in all the years we've been together. How often do you think about your mom? I think about her all the time. And when you think about her, is it mostly about your childhood or is it mostly about her as a person or is it mostly about what are the things that you're thinking?

14:58I mean, it's a mixed bag. Sometimes I'm thinking like, oh my God, she would love to meet my kids. My kids ask me questions about her all the time. They ask how she died. And I think what I think I'm going to say to them when they're a little older is she didn't take good care of her body, which is true. I think about her when I'm eating because she loved to cook. I think about her when I'm reading. She loved to read. I think about her when I was a little girl. I think about it all the time. I'm really lucky that my dad is so amazing, like very lucky because some people don't have either parent my sister has had a hard road she you know got very addicted to very hardcore drugs at a very young age and that was really painful for her to go through and for my dad and i to watch because there was nothing that we could do we had to just let that unwind well you did you did what you could do that most families do when when that happens and the problem we've talked about addiction on this show the the individual the addicted individual needs to be at a point where they're willing to to seek help for themselves i mean like it's a support system you know it it was scary though because you know all i kept reading online was that suicide runs in the family and to hear that you have to really reprogram your own psyche like I've I literally will say to myself when whenever I feel any kind of depression like I'm stopping that with me and to watch my sister like do these drugs that were so intense and her personality changed so much was really scary with knowing what happened to my mom my sister's been sober now I think for 10 years and she's a mom of two and she's doing amazing thank god but you know that probably was not easy for her at 12 years old I can't even imagine how it was for me at 18 to be 12 and to come home from school and have that like ripped from you it's terrible and I think you know one thing, and I'll just say this to you, that has been very helpful to me personally in our relationship is I look at you as the, you know, if we joke on this show that I'm like in the finances and the books, but like you're, you're the anchor of, of the family, you know that.

17:40and it's not just because you have this perspective and this creativity and this caring and all the things it's because when there's chaos in the world you're the grounding force of our family and it's been when i say helpful and why i'm so appreciative of you is there's a lot of negative narratives out there all the time and it's really easy to get swept up into any of those narratives as an individual. And it's really easy to be stressed and anxious. And I would even say it sometimes depressed and worried. And what you do for me, and I think for others that are close to you, is you provide perspective.

18:25And seeing you go through life and build what you've built, not just with your business, I'm not talking about your business, I'm talking about with your family, with me and the children and everyone else, given some of the experiences that you've had. I think like that, that's very inspiring to me. Thanks, honey. Very sweet. I mean it. That's very nice. Something that's helped me a lot. And I think that, I don't know if this can help anyone else, but forgiveness. Like I really forgive my mom. And not only that, a part of me, And this may sound really weird and fucked up, but I understand how she got there.

19:12I just understand when she felt so low and so depressed and so anxious and there was self-medicating going on and it didn't let up. Like it never got off her neck. like I could energetically as a child you can't name depression but looking back I can see how much depression and angst that there was did you sense that as a kid at any point or is this only in hindsight I see it in hindsight and if you feel that depressed all the time and it's never ending i can see as an adult how she got there i'm not saying that she made the right decision i'm not saying that she couldn't have gone and got help she went to a lot of different things to get help when again the help was different back then for this it's just different and i can only imagine feeling that way i mean i get depressed after you know if you drink too much alcohol and you feel like low the next day like i just can't imagine they also misdiagnosed postpartum i know you got i don't know if that had something to do with it you've talked about your journey with postpartum depression the first first go around i mean that really scared me maybe people now understand why a little bit more because during that time you were just a little you're doing great speak from the heart

20:46now that people understand the context when you were going through that postpartum depression and again another taboo topic that people don't understand and we definitely didn't understand it was alarming because obviously i know the history and i was worried right and i was scared and i didn't know what to do we don't know if your mother experienced some of that postpartum and that it was at the time maybe misdiagnosed or not understood as well. Because again, we're talking 20 years ago. People just didn't know a lot about these things. I think that she was maybe overprescribed and that also had something to do with it.

21:24I think there could have been postpartum depression. I think there was a lot of depression, anxiety. But I can understand why Michael was scared when I was going through postpartum depression. I was scared myself. I was having intrusive thoughts. It was nothing. My first experience was nothing like the second two because I learned how to manage it. And that's why I'm so passionate about talking about wellness like cold and sauna. It's not to be repetitive or to shove it in people's faces. It's because the cold, the sauna, the weightlifting, the getting outside the sunlight in the morning have truly changed my entire experience postpartum.

22:11And those things are the reason that I don't, didn't have postpartum depression. So that's why I'm so passionate about those things. Well, again, and I think people get, and we're all guilty of this, you get very uncomfortable approaching people that are going through these issues. And one of my big regrets is that I did, was not equipped at the time with the tools that i wish i was equipped with to speak to you and to reach out to you and to help you go through it again like we were kids you didn't know well i know but it's if you know if i could you know i don't have a lot of regrets in life a lot of things that i would do differently but like if i if i could magically turn back time and be for you or be there for you in a greater way that i would like i would have been i wish i could have been i think i've been trying to make up for it since you've done okay i think that it's not a subject that i um bring up all the time i don't i like i said made that decision to let it fuel me but what i've realized as i've gotten older and i think this is important for the audience to to here is that you can let it fuel you any sad or unhappy or devastating experience that you that you've had but you also can hold the loss like I think you can simultaneously be two things at once let it motivate you but you can also still hold the loss and you can still practice forgiveness and you can still honor it without having to feel like a victim.

23:57And that's what I've discovered. And the forgiveness piece is so important because it really does set you free. I feel like I could sit here and hold a lot of anger towards my mom or hold anger towards the mental health. We can always find someone to blame. But I think at the end of the day, the forgiveness for me has been able to understand her and how she got there and have empathy for it. And I really do have extreme empathy for her. You can see why you care so much about mental health and wellness and well-being in general, given some of the things you know firsthand that can happen. And so again, like when I say you're like the grounding anchor for the family, I know personally for sure I would not have been as interested in taking care of myself in the way that we do and have learned how to do over the years if it wasn't for you pushing.

24:54And I think part of the reason you have such great reason to do that is because you're aware of what it looks like and you don't. Yeah, I am aware of what it looks like when you don't take care of yourself. I'm very aware. and it's why i'm so open to a lot of the things you invite into our life because i'm like well if it's working and if it can work for somebody else and if it can help like i see the upside being so much far greater than the downside i would say that your story while common in terms of what's what happened to you and your family you as an individual are a very uncommon outcome.

25:36And I say that to you all the time. And you don't have to do anything with that other than take it as your husband being proud of you. Do you feel any kind of relief that you got some of this off your chest? It feels like I have created clarity, getting it off my chest and not chaos. I think this could be a very easy thing to make chaotic, whether making my own life chaotic, my kid's life chaotic. But I think that I've really chosen to have clarity around it and a groundedness. And again, it's a choice. It's a choice. And it's not easy. Well, even in our marriage, and again, we've been together for a very long time.

26:26This is probably the longest that we've ever talked about it. And there's been times where there's certain things that I want to say or ask that even after all this time, I don't say and I don't ask. Because I want to be sensitive to you and what you want to share and open up about. And I don't know if that's even the right approach, to be honest. I think a lot of the time I'm confused about what I should push on and not push on. I also think the subject of suicide makes people flinch. I think it's a flinching subject. I think it's like they don't know what to say. They don't know what to do. It's hard because it's not that I'm scared to talk about the subject.

27:12I've talked about the subject to multiple people in private and public settings. It's that I'm scared because I care so much about you that I don't want to do anything to hurt you. I don't want to say something that is going to be triggering in some kind of way. I don't want to make an assumption that is not correct. I don't want to voice something that brings up something that you don't want brought up. And I think that's where it is. I think most people are just, they don't know because they're nervous. So maybe you could enlighten people there. Like if somebody has experienced this, what is the kind of outreach that feels appropriate?

27:54I think what is helpful is that when someone passes away and anyone who's listening who's lost someone, knows this. When someone passes away, everyone surrounds you and you get this influx of people. And it's like everyone wants to help and so many amazing

28:14attentions and you get bombarded. And then six months down the line, it's helpful for someone to check in. A year down the line, it's helpful for someone to check in. I know that it's been 20 years now. I still find it helpful when someone checks in. I know there's some certain people in your life that send you a message or email on the anniversary knowing. Yeah, there's some amazing. And I know you appreciate that because you tell me. It's not an easy subject. It's a sad subject, but it's important to just check in on the person, I think. Well, I think it's, you know, people shy away from death.

28:53I also want to be clear about something that there's so many things that came out of my mom's death that are good. And that sounds really weird, but there are things that, I mean, it made me incredibly ambitious, incredibly driven. Maybe sometimes dissociative though. Maybe it's too much so, but still it drove, it drove a driving force in me and woke something up that I don't think. Yeah, it's made me very independent. Sometimes I have to like rein it in because it's too independent. I think that it's empathetic I think it's made me be able to interview people in a certain way you don't pass judgment on people that's one of the biggest things about you is people feel safe around you because you're honestly not judging them I think that comes though from the experience and she would be proud of you you know that especially because I was her favorite boyfriend friend that you ever dated.

30:02And so she had a lot of them. She'd be very glad that you ended up with me. She would approve. She would. We had some touch and go points, Wendy and I, but, but I think long run, she would have proved. Before we go, I just want to pause for a second. If you're listening and you're carrying something that's heavy, maybe it's something that you haven't talked about or you don't want to talk about. It doesn't have to define you. I didn't get where I am because things were super easy. I got here because I never let what I went through run my future. You can simultaneously carry whatever loss you have in your backpack, but it doesn't have to define your whole life.

30:55Some advice here that I can give is just let it inform you, not define you. For me personally, the biggest shift wasn't happiness. It was peace. I feel calm in my life now. And I think it's possible for you too. It doesn't have to be the whole book. It can be just a chapter and you get to decide what that looks like. That's the message that I wanted to give today. Thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you for listening to or watching the show. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or experiencing a mental health crisis, call, text, or chat 988 to reach the 24 our suicide and crisis lifeline.