What we can learn about life from watching others die with Sundari Malcolm

BIRTH, DEATH, AND CAREGIVING

Sundari Draft Audio

Aransas: [: 00:00:00

We set ourselves up to suffer, maybe sometimes more than we really need to. And so today, Uplifters, we are joined by Sundari Malcolm, who has. [00:01:00] experienced way more than her fair share of loss if there is such a thing. At age 27, she lost her mother. Four years later, she lost her father. And through all of that loss, she has created purpose, an extraordinary impact by helping others learn how to manage life's biggest transitions.

She is the BIPOC grief educator and care curator for the Dinner Party, an amazing organization you'll hear about from her. She's also a birth, grief, and death doula and the founder of a healing doula. She's a yoga and meditation teacher and the publisher of the book Grief Gems. And I am So, so grateful that Leah DeFeo nominated her as an Uplifter.

Sundari, thank you for joining us today.

having me as a guest. Hello [: 00:02:00

Aransas: I, I find your, your generosity and your warmth so calming. And yet I am kind of nervous to spend. This time immersed and lost.

Especially with you as somebody who has experienced so much of it. And I, I imagine though, at the same time as a birth Julie, you've experienced the other side of that beautiful cycle. So let's, let's start with your story. So Andre, you were just a child. When you lost your parents. And I know you cared for your mother for the last seven years of her life.

that prepared you or didn't. [: 00:03:00

Sundari: my mother is a non D. And as you mentioned, um, I was born to Yogi parents, Yogi black parents in Brooklyn.

Uh, my mother had been studying to be a swami actually before her mother was diagnosed with ALS when she was 27. And she became her mother's caregiver, uh, and her mother passed at 55. My mother passed at 55 when I was 27 and I did spend seven years as her caregiver. Um, and. Nothing prepares you for being a caregiver for, especially I think in your 20s, you know, at the time I was coming out of college, I'd gone to the University of Delaware.

I was working as a public relations girl in Manhattan on Park Ave, um, for record labels and nightclubs. And my mother was a teacher in Westchester, New York and I was trying to start my new life in my twenties, I was surrounded by friends who were getting engaged And I was sitting in hospitals, right? And I was, um, commuting back and forth from the city to Westchester, taking her to chemo appointments. I watched one had been a pillar of health for most of my life and I'm such a strong advocate for holistic health and and for wellness in general and such a strong force in the community and to be a caregiver is to watch someone slowly transition and people don't prepare you for that slowness.

hority, so it's whomever you [: 00:05:00

All of a sudden was much quieter and weaker and had needs and mood swings and I didn't know how to really navigate. Um, I think some of the things you don't realize the caregivers and I wish it was things that we spoke about and it's why. In my work, I try to speak to the things that don't get put in those fluffy books that you find, and one of them was that you're angry a lot of the times and you feel lost for the life you're not getting to live, right?

, it's not just emotional lift, but there's a lot of physical support that happens, especially as someone gets closer and closer to transitioning.

. And so the grief starts way earlier than people talk about.

Um, and they call this anticipatory grief, but it's the griereivingf of knowing that your person is going to pass, and so you kind of feel like you're always waiting, which is a really weird energy to inhabit year after year. it was hard. It was beautiful many times, but You know, I, I am looking back on it now. I am so incredibly grateful that I got to be present with her, that I got to be there on those last days. I coach a lot of people about what to do on those last days.

all at a time when you were [: 00:08:00

Sundari: I was.

Aransas: And so what was that tension like? When

Sundari: I look back, I think that in the beginning, I was definitely trying to hold on to both worlds. I was trying to keep up my job. I was trying to keep up a social life.

and then it got to a certain point where you just couldn't, and there's a surrender that has to happen. Um, and a surrender that I had to fully give into, And in order to do that, I had to leave Manhattan and move back to Westchester, and I needed to be on 24 7.

m in my book to the teachers [: 00:09:00

And, and there were a lot of things that perhaps I didn't get to do because I was a caregiver at that time., I also know and I believe this deeply that we're placed where we're supposed to be. And I am where I am and who I am because of that experience. And, and I don't think really I've missed out on anything.

You know, I was moved and shifted, but. That was where I was supposed to be. Hmm.

for all of us, I think this [: 00:10:00

as you said, you were, you were grieving for seven years, but you were also slowly letting go of what you had envisioned those years to look like. And the future that you imagined with your mother, while at the same time, What I hear you describing is an entirely new future being born that never could have existed without that.

, What did your mother teach [: 00:11:00

Sundari: of it? I'll be honest. She didn't speak about it. Um, and perhaps that's also why I speak about it so much.

I think whether that's,, from the culture of, hailing from parents from the West Indies who didn't speak too much to feelings. Whether it was from the generation that she sat at, which is there were bigger things happening in their world at the time that a lot of them didn't feel like they had space for their emotions as well.

, and I think her becoming a mother really, while she would have been only three months out of her grief journey, I don't know that she could have held all of it. Um, so I didn't learn much about grief from her. she taught me tools and I, I think a lot about that with my parents.

It's a funny question [: 00:12:00

when my life came to a halt, I pulled on all tools that they had given me, um, I was set up greatly to know how to walk myself through that.

Um, and it's why I feel [: 00:13:00

And we do so much, especially in today's society of like outward facing of wanting others to come in and heal. And so much of your magic lives within you. And so much of your medicine lives within you. And so that Was a lesson.

e, I imagine there was a, an [: 00:14:00

Sundari:. I was raised between Yogaville and Harlem, but when I hit like teenage years and my twenties really was not sitting around meditating, I was much more of a party chick at that time.

And. It was when I lost my mother and my father was diagnosed a few years later that it felt like I needed to make a deep shift a and I didn't really know where to turn. s. I felt untethered, right? You feel like an orphan. I mean, I don't think it doesn't matter what age you are.

tar and was to just sit and, [: 00:15:00

Aransas: How is that awareness of your own mortality e influenced the way that you live

Sundari: each day? Oh my goodness. I'll tell you, it's been greatest gifts. I know that that might sound weird, especially to people who are new to grief. And so this isn't to invalidate how much pain you find yourself in right now.

But at a certain point, what I realized was I also had this. Because I was aware of how quickly life could shift, because I had sat at that point at the deathbed of my two people, There was a freedom in not really having anyone to answer to.

And there was a freedom in knowing I had already gone through the worst thing I could imagine. And so if I was going to risk and I was going to fail, it was never going to be as bad as what I had just gone through. There's sadness in that, but there's also immense freedom in that, in that realization, and I mean, I did everything.

I went, I, I, one of the first things I did, and I wrote about this in my book, is I watched Eat, Pray, Love, and I actually went on the same trip by myself, like, Bali, India. Um, I went to Guatemala instead. I went on trips by myself. I went on retreats because for a while I was scared to travel alone.

ob. I became a yoga teacher. [: 00:17:00

I was in like severe flight or fright all the time. I had PTSD that I carried from being a caregiver and I needed to remind my body what rest and balance felt like and so I decided I didn't want to live where I lived anymore and I moved to Miami and I lived by the sun and the ocean and then I converted a school bus and traveled around the U.

years, you sit in these [: 00:18:00

And I'm not a huge risk taster. So to be honest, all of those things were done with a lot of planning and a lot of what ifs.. I've kept a job and I've done, you know, all of the adult things I should have, but also I was able to, I continue to live life really fully because I want.

[: 00:19:00

And living, living at best to the wishes of others and. I wish us all differently. this is real temporary. All

ething hard coded into us to [: 00:20:00

What do I really want from this life at the start of each new year? And so as we enter a new year. It is almost a collective transition and an invitation for rebirth for ourselves through intentionally living bolder and brighter and truer. How do you think about New Year's andthe continuous clarification of who you want to be in the world.

I

Sundari: adhere more to the solstice, right, and, and with moving moving with the seasons. What is beautiful about moving with the seasons is this is the time of darker days and colder days and It gives you permission to be a bit more hermetic, right? A bit more, a bit more quiet A bit more reflective.

ed about being a dreamer and [: 00:22:00

Where did I feel like I'm sitting in places where I don't feel as safe as I used to? I think this is the time to like reconfigure your, your circles, reconfigure what you are allowing in and out, you know, like edit, delete, whatever you need to do. Um, I don't really do the whole resolution thing. I'm more of a like, I give myself two things to do each month and that lets me feel like, all right, I'm just kind of chugging along, but I think if you can use this time to just look back at the whole year, be grateful for the [00:23:00] things that worked and also pay attention to what didn't If it didn't work last year, it's probably not going to work next year. And so let's allow things to let go. It's just, what can I shed, right? This is just a time to get real quiet and let go.

Aransas:. it is a perfect context for reflection as you describe and for getting really clear about what we want more and less of in the time ahead.

because we are creatures of [: 00:24:00

S. each year, which I think is interesting. And so it feels like an appropriate time. To have these questions, yes, about death, but what they can mean for us who live. And I know one of the things that you have really taken on as part of your mission in this life is to create community for those who are losing and living.

f community been in your own [: 00:25:00

Sundari: as a woman who comes from A family that deeply believed in ancestral and holistic medicine. I think those cultures are also deeply tied to community healing.

I think it's the Western world that, and I have, I also have a therapist, but the Western world is Is very ingrained in talk therapy, which is really trying to figure out how you manage and walk through dysfunction. Whereas indigenous therapy is really about how we, as a collective can heal so that we can all be better.

self to deal with the circus [: 00:26:00

Show up as your whole self, where you can hear other people's stories,. When you hear what has been rambling around in your brain come out of somebody else', that is deeply validating. When someone looks at you and recognizes the way your head tilts [00:27:00] when you hear something, or the way you catch your breath, that is deeply validating.

End. I think to, so there's that, I think when you sit energetically with people, whether you're online or virtually, energy is real. And when you are all there for the intention of healing and having heart centered conversations, there is a beautiful energy that you are building. When you walk out into the rest of the world, you become a domino, And so when you think that this isn't doing much, like imagine if just groups of 20 people were sitting around healing how incredibly transformative. I think self care is important. Talk therapy is important.

Healing in a [: 00:28:00

Aransas: the point you're making about the ripples that come from the amplification of multiple humans creating that energy together, it is so deep and primal and necessary.

And it's so tempting to hole into our safe, cozy, climate controlled, message controlled, lives in our homes,? And the more we can control them, the more tempting that becomes. Because we can get ourselves into believing that we can tune out everything that's uncomfortable.

e move through these things, [: 00:29:00

And there is just nothing like. Human touch and human presence, even with strangers. I spent almost 20 years at Weight Watchers and I was responsible for the meetings business. And what that was, was curated groups of people with common goals and interests and desires helping each other, not just learn how to do it, because frankly, even though it started pre Google, there have always been learning tools, but there haven't been living tools.

[: 00:30:00

Sundari: do it? So the dinner party is a non profit grief org,, and I came to the dinner party actually as a griever in 2013.

iew in O Magazine and it was [: 00:31:00

And I became a host. So at that point, we were completely in person. And that meant I lived in Miami, Florida. If you lived in Miami in my zip code, you came to my house. And I used to meet twice a month for brunch. And we would sit and everyone would bring food. And everyone had a different loss type.

I eventually became staff in: 2018

We also offer something called the buddy system, which is if. 10 to 12 people feels like too many for you, then you can just be connected to one, right? And you can text and have conversations that way. So the beauty of going virtual was also, if you lived in a really small town and you wanted to We matched with a queer griever who lost her mother. Sometimes we couldn't match in person.

Now you can be matched within days. it's really opened up,, connections for grievers. a queer group.

We're getting much more intentional about. Doing trainings and continuing to do training so that people can hold hard conversations because it's not always about grief.,? How my Work shifted was when george floyd was murdered and what I recognized in that moment was that people of color were showing up In what were predominantly white spaces and showing up at what we call tables.

one of only and weren't able [: 00:34:00

And when you could talk about the headlines without having to also. You are white grievers, what you meant or where you are coming from or what cultural reference you are making, right? This became really important. And so I started creating events that were just for BIPOC healers led by BIPOC and started training the rest of our community to know how to hold BIPOC grief when people of color show up

an American tables that just [: 00:35:00

And so it became this really beautiful opportunity to give people exactly what they wanted. And what we have seen is that, yes, while you and I might share grief, There's something different that shifts when we also share that we both come from the islands, right? Or that we both, we both come from immigrant parents or we both just lost a sibling to overdose.

That is a different kind of healing. Um, and so that has become my main focus. how do we create safe spaces because not all spaces are safe.you have to heal people as a whole. And part of my work. outside of my do or has been, how do I save up all the spaces that are out there?

how to hold people in their [: 00:36:00

Aransas: doing.

murdered and then you have a [: 00:37:00

The silence is louder. . I saw the news today. How is that sitting with you? How are you feeling in light of what's going on?

Some people might say they don't want to talk about it, but they'll notice that you asked. That is one of the quickest ways just to look around who we sit with. Sometimes we read the paper and then we keep moving and we talk to our friend about coffee. You know, it's like there are ways to bring people in.

And the easiest thing is to [: 00:38:00

They're already sad. What you're going to do is give them a bit of light. Someone else besides them remembers. There is nothing I love more than somebody asking me a question about my mother and my father, because it's, you want to still talk about them.

be nice. Share. Give a hug. [: 00:39:00

Aransas: old? You would tell them to engage,? so much of childhood relationship is about just basic engagement. And I've never thought about it until you said that, Sondre. But that's why it feels so easy to make friends as a child, because they courageously walk up and say, Hey, Want to play ball?

re out how to not engage and [: 00:40:00

Sundari: adults are, we're always trying to be perfect.

And it's like, if you're not a therapist, stop trying to be one. Like, just be a friend. Yes. Just be a neighbor. Right? Like, stop trying to be what you're not. If you're not a killer, don't try to kill them. Like, it's real easy. Just be a child again. Hi. How are you doing? Your hair looks pretty, right? Send a cookie. Want to play? so many are sitting in fear right now and all that's happening in our world..

A lot can be solved in just our neighborhoods, just within the square mile of making eye contact and not trying to be perfect and just showing up. Most people just need you to show up.

Aransas:. And showing up doesn't even have to be a big deal. I think you're saying it's like a text, a cookie.

e that you apply to your own [: 00:42:00

Whether people are in caregiving positions, or teachers, or healthcare workers, or purpose led leaders, or parents, so many of us identify in some way as uplifters, people who are investing and pouring energy into others. And yet the most challenging thing for uplifters can be to give that loving kindness and generosity to themselves.

How do you approach self care?

Sundari: It's twofold for me. One is that I have to put discipline in, because as much as I've been raised with this, I'm also a human, and I wake up tired, and I'm like, Mmm, I could also just watch more Netflix, I don't know that I need to go do some yoga right now. Um, and so I put alarms on my phone, and I set them for breath work, for movement.

week, but I set them at the [: 00:43:00

Because we are all walking around, like you said, in some form of caregiving and some form of looking after, whether it's your pets, your home, your car, your human, your spouse, your kids. You are caring for something, right? Your colleagues. You have to be full, and that sounds cliche and bumper sticker talk, but it is real.

et if I have to pee and just [: 00:44:00

Like it does not have to be the big thing. If I'm not in a place to have this beautiful yoga class. I also can touch my toes and move my hips and my arms and just spend a few moments repeating to myself, I'm in my body,? I am here right now, just slowing down. The other part of it is that I try to make it a little fun.

, I created something for myself when I was a griever called the self care bowl, and I still use this and that's because sometimes I. Most of us go back to what is like consistent and so I will always kind of do the same things. So the bowl was really to get me out of my own rut and I'll put stuff in in the beginning of the month and it's like call a friend, watch a comedy routine, go dance to something, I pick something out of the bowl and that's just what I have to do.

And that switches it up for me and it keeps it fun. Now I've had six months of dancing and yoga and watching comedy I've colored. I've watched a childhood favorite. I watched Care Bears the other day, like I'm 43 years old.

learned when I was a griever [: 00:46:00

I don't always make the best choices. And so if I can have things written down and, and put there, and I just have to read it, get up and breathe, go move your body, go call your friend. It feels like someone's giving me really loving. healing advice. Some people perhaps can pull themselves out of holes but I find most of us can't. And we often deflect to authority. And so if the authority is you by putting the alarm in your phone, then do it. It's a brain hack, right?

y energetic bandwidth and by [: 00:47:00

You will notice where you are angry before that spills onto somebody else. l. I also have just started saying no.

And I just disappoint people and they'll be okay. The world goes on. No party has stopped because Sundari didn't show up, right? but. I find that the older we get, a lot of us want to again, appear as, I can do everything and hold everything and be everywhere.

o, I implore you to give up, [: 00:48:00

It's not, there's not just some like, Oh, magic moment or tragedy that defines our lives, but it's every single little moment and practice. And every moment is a chance to bring ourselves back into alignment with who we want to be and how we want to be in the world. And my gosh. Is this, is this conversation packed with reminders of not just [00:49:00] why to do that, but how, and I think it is those two in concert that empower us to live our whole lives.

and to explore our curiosities and to look around corners and see what might be there for us. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for using your story and thank you for turning that story into a set of powerful actions. I'm a doer. I like doers. I like to do life.

th,: 2024

We're gonna be in a room together. We're gonna look each other in the, I literally get tears, my eyes every time I think about looking all these women in the eyes. And hugging all of these people who have been just such a huge inspiration and influence in my life and introducing them and I'm going to send them off on walkabouts, uh, with one another in a highly curated way so that people are really getting to connect deeply with others while doing their own work and setting big intentions and, and that we're doing this in spring It just all feels very right. And so,, listening to you talk about community and the power of intentional communities just made me feel even more excited about it. So for those of you listening, if you haven't [00:51:00] heard about this already, please go to theuplifterspodcast. com and join us. Tickets are available now and,, it's just going to be a really special day for us to come together and celebrate and support one another and get stronger and tap into a little sundry magic for our own lives.