Episode 4: Colin Campbell
“I think that so many of the problems that come up when people are trying to interact with those who are grieving is the attempt to fix it.”
Colin Campbell
Giving Voice to Grief
In June 2019, Colin Campbell and his wife Gail's lives were forever changed when a drunk driver crashed into their car, tragically taking the lives of their two children, Ruby and Hart. Ruby was 17 and Hart was 14. “A week after the crash, I started writing,” says Colin. “I had a lot of rage.”
As a writer and director in theater and film, Colin has a talent for conveying thoughts and feelings through his work. However, the profound loss he experienced left him in pursuit of an entirely different language: that of grief. His one person show titled “GRIEF: A One Man ShitShow,” premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it won a Best of Broadwater Award.
I saw him perform an excerpt in New York City. Audience members, many of whom had also lost loved ones in traffic accidents, were crying and laughing. Even grief can escape Colin's astute observations and dark humor. In 2023, he published “Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose.” He shows us how to lean into pain in order to live more fully, and in his inimitable way, he makes it feel okay.
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Transcript
(Edited slightly for clarity)
Melissa Ceria: Colin Campbell, welcome.
Colin Campbell: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Melissa.
Melissa Ceria: I'd like us to start with Ruby and Hart. Can you tell us a little bit about them and their personalities?
Colin Campbell: Yeah, I want to say that they were artists. Ruby was a visual artist, and Hart was an actor. He was a performer. And so Ruby would sit on the couch and draw paint or digitally draw or paint watercolor, amazing illustrations, paintings. She was extraordinary. And she discovered it late in life. So she was around 15, I think, which is when she started drawing or painting in earnest. She didn't really do much when she was younger, and suddenly it just was this explosive growth and so inspiring. And Hart loved everything she did. He was her biggest fan. Every drawing he said was amazing. And she loved drawing me, which was really beautiful. So I have a lot of sketches of me done by Ruby, which is really sweet to have. And Hart was a clown. He was a performing clown with a kind heart. He would just play these characters and they all had names, and his friends knew them, so they would call out by name: "Do so-and-so." And he would suddenly become this other character. And a lot of them were very bawdy, inappropriate. He was 14-year-old boy, and they were they were hilarious. They were genuinely funny, genuinely hilarious characters. And he was a character as a result. So they were pretty wonderful to have around.
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Melissa Ceria [00:02:37] Thank you so much for introducing them to us. In your writing, Colin, right up front you describe the accident in detail and you tell your readers: "I hope these details aren't too traumatizing to read. I include them for a very important reason. Very early on, I learned to lean into the pain." The idea of leaning into pain and grief can be really daunting for many people. Can you share more about how you approached this?
Colin Campbell [00:03:06] Yeah, it felt, especially in the early days, very scary to touch my grief and pain. I thought that if I started weeping, I would never stop because why would I, right? Ruby and Hart are gone forever, so what's going to make me stop crying? And I really was scared I'd lose my mind. I felt so unhinged already, so disconnected to reality. But very early on, I had this epiphany, I had this moment where I came down the stairs. We had these pictures of Ruby and Hart blown up, like two-by-threes on the walls because for the funeral a friend made four of them, two of each, two of Ruby, two of Hart to put before the funeral gathering. And so we brought them home, and put them up on the wall, and liked that. We just liked seeing their faces looking back at us. So I asked for four more. So we had eight pictures of Ruby and Hart all around the living room taped to the walls. So it was a giant like, you know, offering altar in a way, our living room. And one morning early on, I looked away from them because it was too painful. In that moment, it felt too painful. I thought that's what was happening. I was scared and I looked away. And then I was like, What am I doing? I'm not even going to look at their beautiful faces because I'm too scared of the pain. I can't do that. And that really helped me because it just sort of clarified for me in my mind, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to, I'm not going to not allow myself to feel the pain of their loss, because that'll stop me from looking at them, or thinking about them, or talking about them. And so that helped me, that sort of clarity of like, I'm not going to avoid that pain. I'm actually going to lean into it because there's joy there, you know, accompanying the pain or behind the pain. And you kind of, I feel like you have to move through it. You have to allow yourself to feel the pain if you're going to allow yourself to feel the joy. You don't really get one without the other.
Melissa Ceria [00:04:54] Was that almost a commitment that you made to yourself right away?
Colin Campbell [00:04:57] Yeah, I think so. I think it was I. I shouted out loud to them, and I was in tears and I shouted out loud: "I'm not afraid of you!" And it meant for me. I'm not afraid of the pain, you know. I'm not going to let that stop me. So that is a commitment. Yeah. Yeah. And that helped me, because so often people shy away from pain. Not me, like, I don't want to feel pain. I don't want to feel that. Right? And yet, I do, because that's where I can think about Ruby and Hart.
Melissa Ceria [00:05:26] Right away as you describe it, you're using your words out loud to speak, to speak to them, to speak your pain. What was it like to sit down for the first time, for you to write after the accident? Did the words come easily to you?
Colin Campbell [00:05:41] Yeah. Well, first of all, I don't refer to it as an accident. I call it a crash because I feel like the woman who killed my kids, she didn't accidentally get drunk and didn't accidentally get high and didn't accidentally get behind the wheel and speed. So it wasn't an accident. It was it was a crash. Very early on, the words did come pretty easily to me. It was hard, the words. But I started writing my One Man ShitShow about a week after the crash, and I just had all these feelings. I just felt the need to express them, just to even understand them myself. And it was so strange my life in early grief, especially. It just seemed so surreal, so many strange experiences, so many strange feelings that I had. They came pretty quickly. Yeah. Not easy, but quick.
Melissa Ceria [00:06:25] There is that feeling early on in grief of disbelief. Did that make itself known to you early on?
Colin Campbell [00:06:32] Yeah, every day I was like, I can't believe this is real. And I didn't. I still have a hard time. Honestly, I have a hard time believing that this is real. At some level, How is it possible that Ruby and Hart are gone forever? It's very hard for me to really believe that. But of course it is. They're gone and their spirits live on, and they live on inside of me because they shaped me, who I am as is because of them. But their physical bodies are gone. I don't get to hug them. And that just feels weird. It feels hard to believe, as you said.
Melissa Ceria [00:07:08] Had you written about grief before?
Colin Campbell [00:07:10] No. No. I wrote ridiculous comedies, you know, theater scripts, plays. And then I liked writing horror films. So I guess there's some grief in the horror films that I wrote, but I didn't have any understanding of grief, so I didn't really lean on it in the scripts. And now it's kind of all I want to really think about right now.
Melissa Ceria [00:07:32] At what point in your life did you start writing?
Colin Campbell [00:07:35] I guess it was college, yeah. So I acted in high school. I fell in love with theater in high school and I directed in high school, just a little bit. But then in college, there was like a playwriting contest, a one act playwriting contest. And I wrote this short, absurdist play while the characters say their stage directions and very strange, surreal things happen and people start moving in slow motion, and slow motion fights, and people really enjoyed it. And it won an award and suddenly I was hooked, this is exciting.
Melissa Ceria [00:08:06] So quite early on, you see yourself as a writer. Writing plays an important role in your life. And was this the first thing that you felt was natural for you to turn to after the crash?
Colin Campbell [00:08:17] Yeah, I mean, I initially conceived of this solo show, actually as standup. I thought it was going to be a standup routine, which was not natural to me. I'd never done standup, never performed or written standup or jokes before, but I thought, that's what this is. This is going to be the darkest set of jokes that have ever been performed. I don't know why that was important to me. This is extreme! I was going to be extreme! People were going to lose their minds! But then it morphed more into a a piece of theater, which is more natural to me. And it's not standup, but that was my initial conception of it, yeah.
Melissa Ceria [00:08:55] I was watching a recent interview on 60 Minutes with the author Michael Lewis. In 2021, he lost his daughter Dixie, in a car accident. And he said: "I write because it gives me pleasure. And I thought maybe I wouldn't have access to that pleasure anymore. And I kind of wondered if I would lose my powers." Did you also worry about that at all?
Colin Campbell [00:09:16] I worry about the pleasure part, for sure. I think it's hard to allow myself to feel pleasure. I have so much guilt that I'm alive and they're gone. You know, we were hit by a drunk driver, but I was driving and I was at the wheel. I was responsible for the safety of my family. And I didn't protect them from this drunk driver. And they're dead and I'm alive. And that's very hard. And so then, how do I get to enjoy life? And I know that Ruby and Hart would want me to. They loved me. They supported me, and they'd be rooting for me, for sure. They're also very kind people, which is really beautiful. And so I can take some solace in that. But it's still difficult to be okay with having a great time, it's always complicated. There's always a vein of grief through everything. But in terms of powers, I don't think so. I think it was clear that it was going to channel, it was going to help me in a sense of just, I have a drive, I have a necessity. I also teach writing and I talk a lot about necessity to my students. You know, what's the need? What's the need to tell the story? And suddenly I had a very real need to tell my story. So it made sense to me that it would come, that the words would come.
Melissa Ceria [00:10:34] Is need the same thing is purpose to you?
Colin Campbell [00:10:36] Oh, that's a good question. I don't think it. Maybe it's connected. Maybe it's connected. I feel like purpose is a larger awareness of the role that that I'm playing in the larger world. My own personal need. So when I wrote my one man show, I needed to write it, and I needed to show it to people for my own personal benefits. But then subsequently, now it feels more like it's a purpose because I find that people in the audience, some people in the audience really respond in a very powerful way and it feels very meaningful to them, especially if they're grieving or if they love someone who's in grief. People very often come up to me afterwards and say how much it meant to them that I said these words that most people don't say. Because in the show I explore very dark thoughts that are not flattering and people don't generally share these, I call them ugly thoughts. You know, comparing grief and allowing myself to feel bitter and rageful on stage. So now I feel like that has more of a purpose, you know? So my need help me write it. And then now performance with the sense of helping other people in their grief.
Melissa Ceria [00:11:39] In your work, Colin, you explore, as you said, different aspects of grief, including ritual, denial, and rage. What inspired you to title your book, Finding the Words?
Colin Campbell [00:11:51] It was actually my sister-in-law's idea. Betsy Lerner, she's an amazing writer and editor and agent, and she read the manuscript early on and gave me amazing notes. My first draft was was terrible of my book. It was too full of rage, I think. But I think she was responding to what the book is really about, which is: How do we articulate both our own grief and also our grief needs? So it seems to me so important that in order to process our grief, we have to be able to talk about it so we can literally understand it. It's so incomprehensible. And if we can find the words, they don't have to be great words, but just whatever the words are to help us process our grief, it seems to me so important that we get a chance to do that. And then also, because grief is so misunderstood in our society, it seems so important that we are able to find the words we need to get the help that we need, because people don't know how to interact with us who have experienced profound loss.
Melissa Ceria [00:12:52] That's right, because when people say: "There are no words," which is a very common phrase in our culture, what does that say about our society's relationship with grief, and how does that leave people feeling?
Colin Campbell [00:13:04] Yeah, so I write about that exact phrase, and I've gotten some pushback from some people who are like, "Don't you understand, people are just trying to trying to express their love, but they can't." And I do. I absolutely understand when you say there are no words to me, or someone in my position, it's because you're trying to express the profundity of the loss. But the problem on my end is, that's a conversation killer. You're saying literally, we can't talk about this. This thing that's happened to you is so terrible, we can't really talk about it. So that's the end of that conversation then. And so I was told that phrase hundreds of times. It was bizarre how often people would say that to me because it was like somebody taught people, this is what you do when somebody these kids are killed, you say 'There are no words." That's the deal. As if we all had gotten this instruction from somewhere. At first I was like, Oh, okay, yeah, there are no words. This is terrible. But then after like 100 or 200 times, I'm like: Wait a minute, are there no words? I kind of want words. I kind of need some words. So, yeah, to me that was the problem, that the implicit in that phrase is that we can't talk about this, and I need to talk about it.
Melissa Ceria [00:14:13] Right, because it used to be, and you talk a little bit about this in your book when you also reference the French historian Philippe Ariès, who writes a magnificent book about Western attitudes towards death, and that really traces the evolution of our relationship with death in our culture and basically sort of saying, You know, the old out attitude is that we were all in it together. There was no fear. We lived as community. And today, he writes, "We dare not utter its name." I'm curious, like, what are the implications of that in our culture that we are so distanced today from death?
Colin Campbell [00:14:51] I think you're absolutely right. And I think that the implications are that we don't know how to talk about it because it feels so alien. We don't have any role models. We don't have any normalization of loss and grief. So it always feels abnormal outside the realm of imagination. But we'll all lose loved ones. That's life. And I feel like what he was pointing out is that in earlier times it was more communal. So you would experience death and grief much more often in your life as you're growing up. You'd see people in mourning in public, all dressed in black or weeping out in public. And it was more about communal gatherings honoring the lives that have been lost to the community. And nowadays, it's all in a hospital and we don't talk about it. We don't see it. We're not shown people in grief. In film and television, so often, people in grief are people that are shut down and they're drinking lots of alcohol, and they're not talking about the dead. You very rarely see someone comfortable talking about their dead loved one. It's always discomfort and I don't want to talk about them. It seems so strange to me, because the people that I encounter, they desperately want to talk about their dead loved ones.
Melissa Ceria [00:16:03] That's so interesting. And, you know, you mentioned community and it has played such an important role in your grieving process. Can you talk a little bit about how you and Gail relied on community.
Colin Campbell [00:16:14] Yeah. So Gail's Jewish. I'm not Jewish, but we raised Ruby and Hart as Jews, and when it came time to grieve them, I just leaned heavily into the Jewish rituals of mourning because I had none from from my own culture, you know, WASPS, atheist WASPS. So I love being an atheist WASP. But I had no idea how to handle grief and I needed some help. And so one of the Jewish traditions is is sitting shiva. And so for seven nights after the funeral, people come and sit with you in your house. We had hundreds of people coming to our house every night. And at first it was crazy, "I don't want this." But then I found that I did. I did because it gave me an opportunity to talk about Ruby and Hart, and hear stories about Ruby and Hart, and see other people weeping for Ruby and Hart. And it felt like, Oh, I'm not all alone. You know, other people are in terrible pain at the loss of Ruby in Hart, and that helped me. And when shiva ended, suddenly that structure was gone and people didn't know how to talk to us anymore. They didn't come over and start immediately talking about Ruby and Hart. In fact, some people were very scared to even say their names because they were worried that it would upset us, you know, it would trigger us. Oh, my God, Ruby and Hart. But of course, that's all we were thinking about was Ruby and Hart, Ruby and Hart, and the fact that they're dead. And so you couldn't surprise us with that information or upset us with it. And so we had to tell people that. And so we developed this grief spiel. I call it a grief spiel where we tell people we need to talk about Ruby and Hart. We need to hear their names. We need to talk about our grief. We need to talk about loss. Can't really talk about superficial things right now because we're in acute pain. And that's the deal. And that was helpful.
Melissa Ceria [00:17:52] Yeah, because even the most well-intentioned people can fumble, right? I mean, it's not easy.
Colin Campbell [00:17:57] Yeah.
Melissa Ceria [00:17:58] And you talk about a dear friend who meant well, but who had a habit of telling you how she imagined you felt, which was not helpful to you, nor to Gail. You could have just distanced yourself, but instead, you decide, both of you decided to write her this rather incredible email. Tell us a little bit about that email.
Colin Campbell [00:18:19] It was, it's so strange, I think, especially an early grief I think a lot of us have things that upset us. As you said, it was just like, No, this is hitting us, hitting our ears wrong. We're extra sensitive to this or that. And it's different for everybody in grief, what's upsetting to them. And sometimes it's hard to articulate it. And we couldn't quite figure out, What is it she's doing that's wrong? Like, we don't understand. But but every time we'd get together, she says something and it just rubs us wrong. And it's hard to put our finger on it, but we needed to because it was so upsetting. And she's a dear friend and she means so well. Right, she's so loving, and kind, and supportive. And she loved Ruby and Hart, and knew them very well. And so our first instinct, as you said, was like, Well, forget her! We'll just never see her again! And then we were like, wait a minute, that's not fair. She doesn't even know what's bothering us. We don't even know what's bothering us. So we sat down to think about it and we wrote an email to try to put our finger on it, this sort of nebulous thing. And then we also, the tail end of the email, was because we were going to meet her in person later that day. So we're going to give her a heads up like, Here's what's happening, this is upsetting to us, we want to talk to you about it but we want to give you a little bit of forewarning so you have some time to digest this information. And it was really beautiful what she wrote back. She wrote back to us and I'm paraphrasing, but she'd never walked with somebody who's had this kind of a loss before. And of course, she's going to fall down on her face sometimes. And she says, Thank you for telling me when I do. It helps and I want to be a good friend. And that was such a beautiful response because it's so true. You know, the people that are helping us have never had to help people like us before, right? And so, of course, they're going to struggle with it. I would, for sure, you know, helping someone like me. And so it was beautiful what she wrote. And then we had a beautiful conversation about it because she acknowledged very early on and she she said, Thank you for writing that email. I know it was hard to do that, because it was, it's hard to write to a friend and tell them you're doing something that's bothering me. And it's weird that it's bothering us because it's such a strange, small thing, but it is bothering us and please, can we talk about it? And then she said, You know, you could have easily written me off and you didn't. And that means so much to me because it shows me how much our friendship matters to you. And that was exactly right. That was exactly true. Our friendship mattered so much that we were willing to write this socially awkward email. She nailed it.
Melissa Ceria [00:20:49] It is a beautiful email, and the response is equally powerful. If I recall correctly, I think that she was trying to express how you feel, perhaps maybe to take the pain away. And so often we try and do that with those that we love when they are grieving. And in doing this, you're essentially asking her just to acknowledge the pain. Right? Be witness to it. And you talk a lot about that in your book, the importance of just being witness without trying to make it better.
Colin Campbell [00:21:24] Yeah. Yeah. I think that so many of the problems that come up when people are trying to interact with people who are grieving is the attempt to fix it. The attempt to give comfort. We're not looking for comfort. There is no comfort. Ruby and Hart are dead. You can't fix that. I can't feel good about it. I'm not going to cheer up, and suddenly feel okay that that they're dead. I need to process my pain. I need to feel it. And so any attempt to, like, take away my pain or distract me from my pain is going to rub me wrong. Yeah. And I think that we really, as a society are confused about that. We think we're supposed to offer comfort to try and make them feel better.
Melissa Ceria [00:22:03] Was it a lot for you to have to navigate both taking care of yourself, but also helping others work through this with you? I mean, you're working on two fronts at the same time. That's a lot to take care of.
Colin Campbell [00:22:16] Yeah, it was, but in a way, I didn't really have a choice. I felt like I needed to tell people what I needed, because I needed people to help me. Do you know what I mean? The alternative was, if I just don't tell people my grief needs, they're going to fail me and I'm going to be alienated, and alienating, and alone. And that was just too terrifying. You know, there's some social mores you have to break to tell people, Hey, listen, I need you to talk like this to me. You know, I need to tell you: Please don't talk about your dead cousin who died ten years ago. I don't have room for that right now. Because people would, they would tell me about that. They would tell me, Oh, you know, my grandmother died last year, as if that somehow made it like they understood my pain of my two children dying last week. And it's just not the same. It doesn't work that way. So, yes, so I needed to tell people these rules, even though you're breaking the social more by doing that.
Melissa Ceria [00:23:16] Yeah, I mean, building on that: What are some suggestions that you have for people, on sort of how they can go about doing that, and maybe once they can identify them, because that is really the first step, right? Trying to understand what your needs are, first of all, but then sharing that with friends, loved ones, community members, colleagues. What would your suggestions be?
Colin Campbell [00:23:37] Yeah, that was really one of the impetuses for writing the book was, I wanted to be sort of as transparent and open as I could about that process that Gail and I went through. So I provide the emails that we sent, and the conversations that we had, not that our words were so great, but that you see somebody else finding their words and it will hopefully inspire you, the griever, to find your own words. But some of the things that helped me was pulling people aside one at a time, and telling them my grief spiel, that helped me and to say it right away, like, here's the deal. And then it helped sending emails for trickier moments or for group dynamics. So there was a group gathering on Zoom early on in the pandemic where no one mentioned Ruby and Hart, and no one mentioned, no one asked me how I was doing. And this is pretty early on. This is like six months after the car crash. And the idea that no one was even talking about Ruby and Hart, or my grief, that that just seemed like, insane. But they were just scared. They were scared again, to talk about Ruby and Hart because they were worried that it would be upsetting to me. They'd all heard my grief spiel, but it doesn't matter because you have to push that rock up the hill so many times because it's, you know, trying to change people's ideas about how to interact with the grieving. Yes. sometimes emails are very helpful because they give people opportunity to think about things. They don't put people on the spot.
Melissa Ceria [00:24:55] What has the response been to your work? Do you feel that both your one man show and your book are opening the doors for a broader, deeper conversation about grief in our culture? Are people happy to see this work surfacing?
Colin Campbell [00:25:10] I feel like they are. Yeah. You know, I have written some articles as well, and they all get very positive responses where people like, Wow, I said, there are no words and I'm going to try and do better next time. I'm going to try and find some words. I'm going to talk to people. I did a podcast just a few months ago and this woman was talking about how when she was a teenager, a friend of hers died and then she never talked to the parents again since then. But she talks about this teenager who died all the time. She tells her own children stories about this boy who died when he was 17, when she was 17. And I said, can you please call the parents? Like right now. Can you please call them and tell them that they would love to hear you talk about their son who died, I don't know, 30 years ago. And then she did. And she it was a beautiful conversation. So that was nice. I got to help one grieving mom hear a story about her son who died a long time ago. But yeah, I think the more we talk about it, de-stigmatize grieving and normalize grieving, the better off we're going to be.
Melissa Ceria [00:26:11] And keeping those memories alive for years, right? Telling the stories of the people that we remember and love -- that's so important. We think that there is like a timeline. There is none, right? Those stories, we want to keep hearing them.
Colin Campbell [00:26:27] Yeah. I think in some ways it's easier for me because my loss is so catastrophic that it's kind of obvious that I'm going to obviously think about Ruby and Hart all my life, but there are some losses that society doesn't weigh as heavily, but there's still losses you feel the rest of your life. And I think that's important that a lot of people that are grieving losses, that they do have timelines put on them, as you said, like, Oh, really, you know your dad died six months ago and you're still upset? Like, why? Yeah, I think that's an important cultural change as well. We don't ever stop grieving. Why would we? Of course we're going to always be grieving the loss of a loved one. That's how love works.
Melissa Ceria [00:27:07] A lot of effort was put into your grieving process, and some of that included saying yes to a lot of things that felt counterintuitive because what you really felt was like, No, no, I don't feel like going on that walk. And yet you come to this mindset where you decide to say yes to everything. What were the benefits of that?
Colin Campbell [00:27:29] Well, there were a couple benefits. One was, this was in early grief and I was so full of indecision. I couldn't make any kind of decision. I didn't know what I wanted to eat, if I wanted to eat it all for breakfast. You know what I mean? Like what I wanted to do? I didn't want to do anything, honestly, I didn't want to be alive. So how could I say yes to anything? But I knew instinctually that just retreating to myself and lying in my bed wasn't going to help me move through my grief. It was going to make me feel more oppressed by my grief. And I wanted to talk about Ruby and Hart, honestly. So I wanted to engage with people because I knew if I went for that walk, I'd get to talk about Ruby and Hart and my grief. So I kind of made a rule of like, I'm going to say yes to everything because I want to say no to all of it. So that helped me sort of take off the table the indecision part. I decided ahead of time, Yep, I'm going to say yes. And then it allowed me to have a series of new experiences. I think it's hard, especially in early grief, to even allow yourself to have new experiences. So I'm doing something that Ruby and Hart didn't know about. I'm doing something that I never talked to Ruby and Hart about. They'll never be a part of this. And that's also hard. You know, I remember just clinging to the idea that Ruby and Hart are my whole life and and we talked about everything together. And now I'm doing something they'll never know about. I can't. But that's what it means to be living in life. If we're in life, we're having new experiences.
Melissa Ceria [00:28:56] It sounds like it was about the difficulty of writing your story forward without them being witness to it.
Colin Campbell [00:29:04] Absolutely.
Melissa Ceria [00:29:05] When you look back today on your one man show, on your book, what do you feel about the work that you've created?
Colin Campbell [00:29:13] I feel proud that people are responding so positively to both and that I get to honor Ruby and Hart in them both. So I tell Ruby and Hart stories in the One Man Shitshow, and I tell Ruby and Hart stories in the book, and people have responded. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who said that they just loved getting to know Ruby and Hart more. And you said so yourself before our interview started that you get to you got to meet Ruby and Hart. And that is nice for me. You know, I want the whole world to know about Ruby and Hart.
Melissa Ceria [00:29:43] What's next for you Colin? What are you going to write next? What are you going to perform next?
Colin Campbell [00:29:49] Well, I'm still performing my show and I enjoy talking about grief. I enjoy sort of a missionary zeal to normalize loss. So I like doing these conversations with you, like this one. I'm writing a screenplay, I'm writing a thriller screenplay. It's all about grief. I get to explore my anger in a very safe way because it's just a screenplay. It's not real. I get to explore some rage, and I get to also explore portraying grief on the screen because I don't think it's done very well or very accurately. And right now I'm working on a short piece about how to talk to the grieving. I'm not sure where it will go or what what form it will actually take in the end. But my book is really about helping people who are grieving find the words, but now I'm working on, What advice would you give to somebody to talk to the griever? How do you talk to someone in profound loss? It seems very scary. Somebody just lost their spouse, or their child, or their best friend and you have to talk to them. What do you say? I put forth my ideas and my opinions about that. I'm working on that.
Melissa Ceria [00:30:53] Well, I will say that I think you have a kind and reassuring voice with which to guide people during these times. And thank you for your work. I wish you all the best as you continue to explore grief through words, and thank you for telling us about Ruby and Hart, too.
Colin Campbell [00:31:11] Thank you for having me. This was such a nice conversation.