My mom had died from a bunch to me,
took when I was 11.
And to this day, my family has never spoken
about our mother or what happened.
And she was like such a big presence in our lives.
And whenever I asked anything,
the response has been, "You're living in the past.
You're so emotional.
What's wrong with you?
Why you such a downer?"
And to hear all this when I'm 11.
And to hear it through adulthood.
I just kind of came to this crossroads
where I was like, "Ahh, motherhood, I'm married.
Am I gonna have babies?"
And it was like, "How do I become a mother if I never knew
my own?"
And if I knew my family was like hands off,
you're not allowed to talk about it.
What else am I gonna do for closure?
What else am I gonna do for direction?
(gentle music)
- Hi there, grief growers.
I am so grateful to be here with you as always.
If you have been growing alongside me for a while,
welcome back.
If you are new to me and my work, hello.
My name is Shelby for Scythia.
I am a grief coach two times.
Soon to be three time author and the founder of Life
after loss academy.
And I have had the honor of helping dozens
of grieving people stop feeling lost,
stuck, broken and overwhelmed.
And start building lives that they genuinely love
from the lives that loss forced them to live.
This includes of course not only death-related losses,
but divorce, breakup, diagnosis,
and every other major life transition that changes our life.
Here on the show, we believe that grief
is not just something to get over.
It is something that we grow with and alongside
for the rest of our lives.
And that when we stop treating grief
like a problem to be solved,
or as you'll hear soon in my conversation with Susan,
less like a tormentor in our brains.
And more like an invitation to create and live more deeply.
We create meaningful lives that are rich
with the memories we carry, the struggles that we faced,
and the precious awareness of what it means
to be right here, right now.
Today's guest, as I hinted, is Susan Leo.
She is a multi-hyphenate storyteller, activist, and author.
Through her book, podcast, and live performances,
Susan takes audiences of all kinds
on journeys of healing, intergenerational trauma,
embracing authenticity, and finding boldness
in vulnerability.
Susan is the creator of her theatrical solo show,
140 pounds, How Beauty Killed My Mother,
which received critical acclaim from the LA Times, NPR,
and American theater.
Her debut memoir, The Manicurist Daughter, seen here,
is an Apple Book Pick of the Month and must listen of the month.
And has received accolades from the New York Times, NPR Books,
L Magazine, and The Washington Post.
Together, we are talking about creating art from grief.
What happens when no one in your family
wants to talk about your loss?
And ultimately, how grief and all of its alchemical transformations
changes us and those who receive our creations as well.
Here's my conversation with Susan.
Hi, Susan.
Welcome to grief grower.
I am so delighted to have you here.
I held up your book and did a little dance.
And told you, I have earmarked nothing
because I listened to your audio book.
Grief grower has been listening to my work for a while.
We'll know that Susan had a stage show on Mother's Day
that I tuned in for during COVID called 140 pounds.
And it was one of the most profound things I'd ever seen.
And it was one of the first virtual dates I ever had
with my wife, soon not to be yet wife.
[LAUGHTER]
That's like a really intense date.
It's after those kinds of dates where you're like, are we good?
Do we want to be forward?
Absolutely.
It was really wonderful because my wife
and I have both experienced mother loss.
And we were constantly looking for things
to do dating long distance.
And grief was a big cornerstone of our relationship,
especially in those early days.
And watching your show, her and Canada, me and the US.
And being on laptops with each other while your stage performance
was pulled up live was one of the coolest experience I'd ever
had.
So when I found out this book was coming out,
the manicurist daughter, Grief Grower's,
I got in paperback, which I'm thrilled about.
I was so excited because I sensed
there would be an expansion of your stage show
and then just so much more research and depth.
But the first place I want to take you is kind of funny
because you open up the book talking about that your first
instinct after your mom's death was vengeance.
And it's like, yeah, I think do you have a sense of where
that came from for you?
Like was it youth?
Was it rage?
Was it not being heard inside your family?
But I was so taken by that as you being
able to point at that and be like, that was the first thing
I wanted to do.
Yeah.
I mean, my answer is it was being shut down.
You know, so to give your listeners some context,
my mom had died from a bunch to me
took when I was 11.
And to this day, my family has never spoken about our mother
or what happened.
And she was like such a big presence in our lives.
And whenever I asked anything, what happened?
When you found out the news were, were you?
How are you feeling about it?
Are you guys even OK?
The response has been, you're living in the past.
You're so emotional.
What's wrong with you?
Why you such a downer?
It's just like--
and to hear all this when I'm 11,
and to hear it through adulthood.
It-- I just kind of came to this crossroads
where I was like, motherhood, I'm married.
Am I going to have babies?
And it was like, how do I become a mother if I never
knew my own?
And if I knew my family was like hands off,
you're not allowed to talk about it.
What else am I going to do for closure?
What else am I going to do for direction?
And the most obvious thing for me is, you know,
vengeance, because the doctor who was negligent
was on probation, had over 20 losses against him,
didn't carry malpractice insurance,
actively targeted the Vietnamese population.
And for me, at that time when I wanted vengeance,
I was getting an MBA at Yale.
I had gone to Harvard.
My parents were both people from Vietnam
who didn't finish ninth grade, you know?
And when my mom was in the coma, all these doctors
were trying to speak English to my father
who couldn't understand the complexity of what was going on.
So my 19-year-old brother was the proxy.
You know, he had to make those decisions
because of the language barrier, right?
So for me, when I wake up to the fact that,
wait, this guy got away with all of this,
never paid our family a dime.
You know what?
I'm egemocated.
It's time to seek vengeance, right?
Like it was just like this pent-up rage
where I couldn't get any closure from my family.
So at least I could get some money from my dad
'cause he didn't have a retirement.
He did nails, right?
Like, wouldn't that be the most beautiful Asian daughter
thing to do?
Plus, it was just like, I felt like we had no voice.
We couldn't fight with this man, right?
And I was 11 at the time.
And now when I was about 30, I was like, you know,
it is this time.
It is time to seek justice, right?
But really it was closure.
And it was closure from what my family couldn't give me.
- Yeah, and it's vengeance not just
for the sake of getting revenge,
I think is what most people would think when they hear that word.
But it's vengeance for answers,
vengeance for redemption, vengeance for reparations
in terms of money for your dad.
Like it's vengeance that's multi-layered
and not for nothing.
And I think a lot of people, especially in like Eurocentric
societies, pigeonhole, anger or revenge
as something that's petty or useless or overreactive.
And I think there's actually a very welcome place
for anger in the face of grief.
And this is a very valid one.
- Yeah, and remember, I had no time to process grief.
We never went to grief counseling.
My family never talked about it and pretended my mom
was never existed for two decades, right?
So it's like, even though by the time I hit college,
I started doing counseling.
And I would talk about my mom a little bit,
but it is a very strange way to process grief
when it impacted the whole family.
And I could never talk about it with a family, right?
Like there was something that just could never move forward
with that type of processing.
And I think this project that I took on to find
my mother's killer was an answer for me.
- Yeah, and I think that leads right into my next question,
which is, can you speak on the grief of having no guidance
being considered too small or too annoying or too full
of questions or too young or too dwelling in the past,
too much of everything.
I got that sense so much through your book
and even that legacy story, too, of like your mom feeling
as if she was too much and going into the surgery,
physically too much too big for this world.
And having that kind of passed out of even in her loss,
now I carry that story of too much of something.
(crying)
So much of my worth when I was a young kid
was tied to my body.
And I remember a year after my mom died
from a botched tummy tuck.
My dad and aunts were like, "You can't have a second
"bola rice because if you eat too much,
"then you'll get fat and no one will love you
"and you'll die alone."
When you tell that to a 12 year old,
you can't undo those things.
And so for me, I was just so desperate for a man to love me,
to fill that void.
And I stayed in a number of relationships too long,
too long.
And I tolerated too much because I was so scared
I would be abandoned again like the way my mom abandoned me.
That's what happens when you don't resolve your grief.
It's just gonna go somewhere else.
So when folks are like, "I mean, haven't you grieved too long
"or it happened so long ago," or you know, like all of that,
it's just like, well, if I don't face it,
it'll just manifest its ugly head somewhere else, right?
And it's like, oh my God, in the book,
there's just like moment where I'm like,
"I get in a Harvard, I get in a Harvard,
"and I go and what do I do with that chance?"
Is I go and get sucked into a Korean yoghicle?
And it was just kind of like, what no, Susan,
I'm sure all the readers are like, stop it, get out, get out.
And like, part of that is like the desire
to feel that belonging in the family,
to fill that void, to be her, to be seen, you know?
And sometimes you pay for it.
And sometimes you say at least with a cult,
the rules are consistent.
I know how the game works here.
And many times I had the realization that it was a cult.
I run my senior thesis on it,
and I would go in and out quitting and coming back,
quitting and coming back because my default world
wasn't that great to begin with.
And so when folks are like, oh, you know,
like I don't wanna process this, this is too much
or like people are like, move on, it's just like,
it doesn't move on.
It'll still resurface in your life in a very toxic way.
Yeah, it'll come out somewhere.
That's for sure.
And I think there's something to that.
This is not one of the questions.
I had a prep for you, but I think there's something
kind of beautiful in what you're implying
is that even the shitty things we try
to like force our grief into or the weird ways our grief comes out.
And life after loss, like those things are worthy of mercy.
Like you don't look back at yourself who was in a cult
and be like, she was such a dumb bitch.
You can be like, oh, she was trying really hard
to stay alive after her mom died.
Yeah, but see, see, here's the irony.
It's like, I can say that now, 2020,
but when I was in it, I just felt like a head purpose,
and I felt and I just felt loved and seen, right?
So it wasn't like, I wasn't like directly connecting the dots.
Like, oh, because of the abandonment of my mother,
I'm filling the void with the cult.
I can only say that now as a writer trying to,
I'm trying to transition you to the next chapter, right?
Like, it wasn't so obvious, but I did,
I do remember going to one of the retreat centers in Sedona
and wanting so badly to have a conversation with my dead mother,
you know, and of course, did they exploit and manipulate me?
It helped fucking yeah, you know?
But like, it's strange, you know, like it was explicit,
but yet implicit, right?
Like it was obvious, but then not.
I don't know if that's coming, if that's clear to understand,
but grief is so layered and so nuanced that it's like,
even if I was like, no, no, no, I'm just here
'cause I fell in love with the youth cult leader
and I wanna have his babies even though we need to be celibate.
Like, even though there was also that truth,
that could be true and the desire for my mom
to connect with her because I'm so lonely and isolated,
that can be true, right?
We could hold both things, even though I was definitely motivated
by the youth cult leader and he was like super hot.
- Yeah, well, I think that just points to all of us being able
to look back at our past selves and see,
and definitely not in the moment,
'cause hindsight is not available in the moment,
but to be able to look at the things we did
to try to deal with grief as things we can have mercy on,
as versions of ourselves we can understand or forgive
as opposed to shame for grieving in that way,
or grieving through that outlet,
or grieving through that hobby or cult or book,
or group or choice.
- Yeah, I wonder, one of my favorite parts of the book,
and kind of a part that I was not expecting,
was where you dove into your parents' boat people escape?
- Yeah, the refugee. - Yeah, yeah.
- Can you speak out the going through the woods
and getting your feet torn up and just all of this,
it is a crisis to even consider leaving.
Can you talk more about how exploring and then discovering
where you came from and what your parents
and then ancestors had to endure?
How did that change your context of your grief?
- So by the time you get to the middle of the book,
there's a chapter called "Bloody Feet" where Susan
has been so desperate to understand who her mother was, right?
And then finally, you can see her parents' refugee escape
and it's clear, as you can see the journey from trying to escape
to getting your refugee camp to getting to America.
But growing up, it was not clear to me.
No one ever used the words PTSD.
No one ever said, we would ask about the Vietnam War
because like in high school, we studied the Vietnam War
in high school, and so I go home and ask questions
and nobody wanted to talk about it.
And then there was also like the Vietnam flag,
the red flag with the Yellow Star versus the Southern Vietnamese flag,
which is a yellow flag with three red stripes.
And I was so confused at the cultural celebrations
we would have the Southern Vietnamese flag,
but at school when I had to like draw your home country's flag,
it was another flag and I was so confused.
And I would ask and there was like, don't talk about it.
So it's a very funny thing to say when someone's like,
go back to where you came from and it's like,
I have no idea where I came from
because what my parents had to escape was so traumatic
that they didn't have the words or the capacity
to look at that again.
They just needed to move forward, right?
And of course when I asked them,
they would just be like, why are you so stupid?
Go to your room.
There was no explanation of what was going on for them.
And so after my mom passed and I was on this quest
to know my mother and then I went back to Vietnam several times,
eventually my family, my aunts in particular realized
I wouldn't stop.
They eventually started giving me more information
and then I did the show and then I told them
I was gonna do the book and then I was like,
if you don't tell me what happened, you know?
And I would come like with more specific
like smaller softball questions.
I was like, I need to note this because I'm writing it down
and then they're gonna print the book
and then you can't edit it.
You know, like, yeah.
Like, like, we're documenting the truth, please tell me.
And it was after that and then finally talking to my dad
a few more times like 'cause no one wants to talk about it,
she'll be so it's so crazy.
Because now when you read it,
there's a clear beginning, middle and end
by the time you get that to that section.
Like, like, there's clarity and I had to fight
for that clarity for a long time.
And it was after that I had that context to understand,
geez, it was five failed attempts and the six one,
you know, my family finally made it to a Malaysian refugee camp
but one of the failed attempts.
My mom and dad had both their toddler sons, my brothers,
and they got caught when they were trying to get on the dinghy boat.
And then so my dad had just run by himself through the jungle.
My mom had both kids on both hips got lost in the jungle,
got dehydrated, like was running so fast
with both kids on her hips.
They were like, I think two and four at the time.
And she, when she finally gets back,
when she sells off her jewelry,
so someone could get her back to the house.
Her feet is covered in blackness and it's not from dirt,
but it's from the thorns that were in her feet.
And I call that chapter bloody feet, right?
The things she had to endure, the path that she had to take
so that I could sit before you today.
And when I look at all of that,
I remember my dad once told me,
you have nothing to be sad about your life wasn't hard.
He was orphaned.
He was orphaned, lost both his parents before he was 12.
And he went through that and he was a widower and he had four kids
and we lost our business eventually.
Like he said to me, you have never known fear.
You have not had our hard life.
So it's taken me a long time now that I'm 40,
tough compassion for everything while my dad is saying.
But when he first told me that, it really did hurt
because I'm like, are you kidding me?
Like why can't you just give me what I need?
Why can't you just talk to me?
Why can't we just have a conversation about the past
because it's eating me alive?
I feel like I'm a zombie.
I feel like I'm dead.
And yet I'm alive.
And it's been like this for so long
so why can't you give me that grace?
And he can't.
He can't, he can't to this day, right?
And so I finally got to this point when I had to do
my healing journey for me because my family couldn't do it for me.
Right? They said, here's our indirect boundary.
We can't participate.
I wish they said it like that.
They just said it like, so emotional.
You're so living in the past, right?
I wish they just said, hey, that's my boundary.
I'm trying to protect myself because I don't know
what's going to happen if we go there, right?
I don't know if I can take care of myself
if we excavate that.
I wish they could have said all those things
and they don't have a capacity to, right?
And so now I can look at them with compassion now.
But at the time, man, I felt lonely.
But then after understanding my parents' journey,
I was like, man, we all got our demons, right?
And they endured that sacrifice
so I could have it better.
And it doesn't mean I have had a fairy tale princess life,
but I do understand now why my dad can't let me in, right?
Because there's a lot of unresolved trauma there.
And then I mean, I think my overachiever self,
my very hypercritical perfectionist self,
will sometimes be like, get over it, dude, come on.
Pick yourself up.
Let's do this.
Like, come on, come on, right?
Like it's like my life wasn't that hard relative to them, right?
So then I'm like, sometimes when I'm being mean to myself,
I'll just be like, move on, dude.
Right?
It's like another layering of my dad's voices.
And my aunt's voice and my siblings' voice,
being like, we're all out of options.
You know, like, I don't know how to help you.
And it's just like, shit.
All I needed was a goddamn hug.
Yeah.
Which I never got.
Never got.
And there is such a specific flavor of grief and mourning
and like legacy, but like hollow legacy
and feeling like and being, you're the one who has to carry
everything.
I'm the one who has to research everything.
I'm the one who has to know everything.
I'm the one who has to compile and travel to understand
and and marinate in everything.
And I say has to because there's this compulsion of,
I have to understand this or else I will not know my mother.
And then there's also, and I wonder if this is true for you,
the sense of if I don't know one else will.
Oh yeah.
Dude, never so fickle.
Like, I'm just like, wait, how many lawsuits do that guy have
against him?
Was it 19?
Is it 21?
You know, like I'm not a ram.
Shelby, I'm at a ram.
And as we get older, life feels like it's moving a little bit
faster because we're having less first time experiences,
right?
And we have more responsibility.
And so for me, if you ask me, tell me all about your grandparents.
I can tell you a couple details.
Tell me all about your great grandparents.
No clue.
Don't even know their names, right?
And so for me, my fear was like, if I don't figure this out now,
I will forget.
Just like how my dad has now just forgotten a lot of things,
you know, where I was like asking about spirit channeling.
He's like, I never did that.
I was like, you never did what?
You did it right in front of me.
I saw what happened.
I feel like many times, you know?
But it was like, as we get older, we forget.
We have such selective memory, right?
And I mean, in general, humans have selective memory.
We're trying to just uphold our own narrative of our own ego.
Fine.
That's fine.
But at the same time, one day my son will read this,
if he chooses, right?
And then he'll know where it comes from.
And I will tell you, it was very gratifying
when my 15-year-old nephew read it and did a book report
on it in high school, right?
And he had to write a chapter from a different point of view.
And so he chose his dad's point of view, which
is my oldest brother, King.
And he wrote that.
And it was just kind of perhaps that there
was some healing happening outside of my own work, right?
Like I didn't have to personally have those conversations
with them.
The book can continue doing the work without me directly,
which is so gratifying.
Yeah.
I want you to say more on that because there
is such an energy input and output in making something.
I'm thinking of your show, 140 pounds.
And then obviously this book, the Manning Curious Daughter,
what does it feel like to go from having pursued and generated
the thing to them letting it exist in the world
and touch other people?
So my play, it was called 140 pounds,
how beauty killed my mother.
And sometimes when I'm out in Seattle and walking around,
some will be like, hey, hey, hey, you're 140 pounds.
I don't know.
Sure.
And then I'll scream back.
Depends if I'm bloated because I can go up to 150.
That's why I come back, joke.
So it's interesting, right?
Like I did that six years ago.
And of course, we had COVID in between, which really morphed time.
But it is interesting for people to come up to me
and say the wildest things to me because they've been able to watch it.
And this one woman, oh, I gotta tell you the story.
This one woman, she is walking in front of my front yard.
And my kid has like a sock puppet store up.
And like I'm trying to like crank away
before I do a book talk, a virtual one.
And then she's like, oh, what are you doing a book talk on?
Which, what are you reading?
I was like, oh, it's my book.
And I tell her the premise and then she looks at me.
And then she says, I've had your name in my wallet for three years.
And I was like, tell me more.
Yeah, say more on that, please.
And she saw a clip of it at the Wing Luke Museum,
which focuses on Asian American stories.
There was an exhibit called Where Beauty Lives.
And she watched it and wrote my name down to look me up in the future
and put it in her wallet and held it there.
And then she was like, I just pulled that paper out the other day thinking,
what, I don't need to hold this paper in my wallet anymore.
And you're sitting right in front of me.
And I was like, oh, yeah.
And then she read the book.
And then she came to one of my book talks and was very beautiful.
And it's strange to take up other people's ram,
to take up real estate in their brain.
And I don't know it, right?
I'm like, am I landlord?
Am I making income here?
Is there some compound interest I want to redeem?
You know, like it is so interesting
that I don't have to do the work in the theater night after night, right?
And I don't want to do that anymore now.
My kid is five.
Like the amount of time I had performed that show 60 times to 7,000 people in one year.
I don't got that kind of time now, right?
Like I can't be away from my kid that much.
And so it's wild now.
I was just at a trailer Joe's parking lot the other day.
Someone goes, hey, I don't know why so many people scream at me.
I was just going to say there's a lot of people just shouting in your general direction.
Yeah.
And they're like, hey, are you so sad?
And I was like, yes.
And she's like, are you that man a carousel?
And I was like, yes.
And I'm like buckling in my kid into his car seat.
And I go over and I talk to her and she talks about how she's Vietnamese Chinese also.
And she was just like, my God, like I felt so seen.
Like it was so creepy.
It was just like everything that happened, you kind of happened to me, like in terms of
just the cultural rearing, right?
And our relationship to our elders.
And what we're allowed to have dreams about, like, who could we actually be in this world?
And also how we always had to straddle two identities.
And always feel so other to be Vietnamese American.
And she was just like, I've been giving it to everybody.
And I'm like, please rate me five stars.
I was like, thank you.
And, but Shelby, it's so exciting.
Because for me, it's like the height of this book, I finished it and we went to deep editing
in January 2023.
Right?
So I haven't really touched the work now for about two years.
I'm actually working on a new thing, which is a stand-up comedy show, which I'm super excited
about.
And it's so wild to me because the book doesn't consume my brain unless I'm going to go do
a talk, do a podcast.
And then I'm like, oh, yeah, I got to think about it again.
It was like, I had a very intensive experience with it for a good two years.
And now I just kind of like, I go to mom mode.
Or now I'm like the interim executive director of a local theater.
And then I go into theater, ED mode.
And then I switch.
And then someone come up to me and then they're just like, I'm your soul sister.
And I'm like, what?
And then they'll be like, I was in a cult too.
And I'm like, what?
Okay.
You know, and it was just like, it's so intense.
It's so intense because people, not only are they yelling at me down the street, they
also want to hug me.
Right?
They also want to tell me their story.
They also are like a crying in front of me and being like, I don't know what I'm crying.
I'm like, we all know why you're crying.
Right?
But also like, yes, yes, to trust your tears with the stranger and realize we're actually
not strangers at all that we're all suffering on this planet.
We're all wanting to be loved, seen and celebrated.
Yes.
Thank you for trusting me on that.
Right?
And if I was able for because of the work I did, you were able to see yourself reflected
in me and that led for you to be inspired to take action here, for you to have time to
actually cry those tears for you to commune with your ancestors, for you to dislodge some
trauma.
Yes.
I'm so glad I got to do it.
And I didn't have to personally do it.
Right?
That's exciting to me.
And at the same time, I don't even know what's happening, right?
I didn't know the moment you listened to the audiobook.
I don't know when the Trader Joe's girl listened to it or read it.
You know, like, I don't, it's now living a life without me.
And people always said, you know, your books get a teenager.
They're going to have their own friends.
I was like, no, no.
They're now, I'm going to have to personally make every single friend, you know?
And it's just like, it's so exciting that it is available in a mass market way.
You know, I'm so glad anyone can just like open up an app and download it.
Like, that's so great because it was so exhausting to hold by myself for so long.
Yeah.
And then to know not only has it been received, but in many ways, it's being like, it's acting
as a sort of catalyst for other people too.
Yeah.
Well, that's very special.
You know, I, it feels so nice to get notes on Instagram or for people to yell at me at
grocery stores, you know, like, it's so nice to know that my story mattered that my mom
is remembered that, that the trauma that I experienced actually has new type of power, right?
It's not a power that makes me feel small.
It is a power that makes me feel big and others feel big too.
That I'm going to sit with that for a minute.
That's the beauty of, and I don't need to prescribe everybody go make something with
your grief, but that is one of the beautiful things that comes from feeling compelled to
make grief a project of sorts.
Yeah.
You know, it's something no one ever sees or something that lots of people see.
Yeah.
I mean, honestly, the pain of grief is like swirling and swirling in your brain and then it
like goes to sleep and you're like, oh, it's gone.
Turns around in a swivel chair and was like, gotcha, you know, like, it's terrorizing.
It's draining in your brain.
And what is cool about creating something with that grief is that there will be refinement
eventually unless you're super perfectionist like I am.
And then it's even more terrorizing.
I like to try something, right?
Like the first time I, the 140 pounds that we all saw here that it took on tour, that's
a fifth iteration.
The first draft of it called Dr. X, how I mentioned my mother's death, very terrible title, but
that first draft of it, I was just like, ah, putting it out there.
It was a 25 minute show.
I had never really done theater before, you know, and I was just kind of there because I was
a failed standup comic that didn't want to heckle around me.
So I went into solo performance.
Like it was like a, it was because I was stared, but I needed it to leave me.
I needed to express it.
And over time I started getting different directors working on draft, iterating, examining different
questions around out, you know, and then eventually it took shape and form 240 pounds.
So there is something very beautiful about iteration and drafts and revision because then
I'm changing my understanding of me and my grief is changing.
It is now transforming and that is called post traumatic growth, right?
When we're able to put it out there and then keep reshaping and reshaping so that that
narrative is empowering instead of disempowering.
But I find it difficult to do that if there is not an audience, if there is not a deadline,
if it's just me just sitting with my grief, I go crazy.
Clearly, I was in a cult, but it was more like for me to express it, it was able to transform
and dislodge from being very stagnant energy in my brain, my body too, right?
And so this is an exciting thing about creation.
Whether that's a poem that you write and you share at an open mic, you know, it could be
a song, it could be a play, it could be a short story.
The act of sharing it is releasing it and that transforms its energy.
Yeah, grief alchemy.
I love it.
I'm curious about, and this might be a total tangent from manicurist daughter, but you
say you're going into a stand-up comedy next.
Tell me about the transition to be like, and now I'm going to be funny on purpose.
Does it have anything to do with grief or does it not?
Or does it not?
Is it all interconnected?
Is it the same, same but different?
So I started stand-up comedy 12 years ago.
No I quit stand-up comedy 12 years ago.
I started stand-up comedy 14 years ago and it brought me life and I love being on stage and
I never really thought I was an artist but I just really wanted to, it was just 2011 and
I was like, if the mind calendar is true and it's going to be the end of the world in
2012, what do I need to get out of my, get the wiggles out on before I die.
So I don't have regret.
That was actually a true motivator.
She'll be.
I have that motivator for a totally different thing in my life and that's a conversation
for another day.
But yeah, I was like, look at the calendar if we all die in 2012.
It was Y2K, I'll love her again.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, we're like, we're all holding our breath at midnight and then it was like, oh, okay.
Yeah, and then you pour your bowl of cereal and go on with your day.
Yeah, you're like, I'm on against everything's fine.
I guess we're all still here.
Windows 95 still working.
Okay.
So for me, I left standup comedy 12 years ago because I was afraid because I got heckled and
I, it was a very painful day in my life.
It was so bad.
My siblings who were watching who usually give me shit just bought me a drink.
I just started whispering my jokes into the microphone and kind of walked off and it was
so much shame.
I had so much shame.
And so for me, I turned 40 this year and I was like, oh, my bucket list.
I just like still want to be a Pixar voice character.
I want to host Asa Del One Day.
I want to start acting my own TV series and I'm just kind of like, well, Susan, if you really
want to do that since you're kind of like a delus celebrity, you're going to have to make
your name through standup comedy and have your own special and then you're going to be
like found.
And I was like, all right, like the logic in my brain to do anything is so intense.
She'll be and I was like, that's the conclusion.
Yeah.
That's the linear.
That's the if a plus b equals mx plus over squared triangle, whatever.
Yeah.
It's like becoming a mom.
I was like, oh, well, if I want to pull out my ID, I just need to know my dead mother.
So I got to avenge her.
Uh, face my cowardice of what I've always wanted to be, which is a performer.
I was just like, Susan, do you have to make it so hard?
Yes.
Because then when you raise the stakes, I'm actually motivated, right?
Otherwise, I'll quit.
It's just like, anyways, so I was like, I'm 40.
Like I'm 40 now, you know, like I'm when I was a kid, I always let all the adults knew
the answer, right?
They were so powerful.
And now I look around.
I'm like, they definitely don't know the answer.
And also mortality, my own mortality, when am I going to die?
My mom died when she was 38.
Did she plan for that?
No.
So many, I read the New York Times obituaries kind of for fun.
And I always like reading the ones that are people who died in their 40s and 50s, because
boy, were they not expecting it, right?
And it inspires me to live.
It inspires me to live like a mortal.
Get on on it.
That's the name of my sub sack, by the way.
Get on on it.
It's called live like your mortal.
Live like your mortal.
That's right.
Right.
And I was just like, no, Susan, like, go.
Do the thing.
And it's not like I'm just doing random jokes.
Of course, it's going to be talking about intergenerational trauma and healing.
Of course, it's going to be talking about grief, right?
But I think that's it.
Is that so much of this is unspoken, taboo, shameful.
But if we put it out in the open more, when we invite it with a little bit more laughter,
right?
And this is not too far from what who I am, right?
140 pounds, manicure starter.
Hopefully there were moments of levity for you, right?
Like hopefully you got to laugh a couple of times so that you can stay with me and go deeper,
right?
Laughing is a form of a release.
And so if I can take you on that emotional roller coaster to feel so much joy and laughter
and to also feel that the deep pits of grief, when we can expand our range of experience,
I think we can then widen our range to feel more.
I think that's a good thing.
Yeah.
And so what if I do that and translate it to another medium?
Comedy.
Mm-hmm.
I love this 140 pounds.
What if we make it short?
The manicure is daughter.
What if we make it deep?
Next iteration, stand up comedy.
What if we made it funny?
And so it's just like, what if we did this?
What if we did that?
And it's kind of like a like a play-doh extruder.
It's like, what if we made it the shape?
What if we made it that shape?
What if we made it the shape?
What does it look like then?
And something new and interesting always comes from it.
And now what will happen when you hand people a funny version of your grief.
Yeah.
Like, you make that thing.
You alchemize it, you release it into the world, and you'll have people running up to you
in a grocery store parking lot for totally different reasons.
Yeah.
For in a totally different genre of art.
Right.
Because I think at the end of the day, we were very siloed human beings.
Right.
I'm a dependent film.
I like heavy metal.
I'm into Taylor Swift.
Right?
It's just like, mm-hmm.
Well, I'm a foodie.
I'm in Debasket weaving.
You know, and it's just like, OK.
How do I spread my message more?
How can I capture new people in?
How can we do the work of our soul?
Because I think you can read all the articles you want.
It can be a very cerebral exercise.
But when you get punched in the stomach, when you feel it in your heart, when you are crying
physical tears, there is a memory.
There is a knowing.
Can we go there?
I think that's what that is.
What about your work stays with me and keeps sticking with me?
I had a grandmother who would make us oatmeal for breakfast every morning because she would
say it sticks to your ribs.
But I feel like your work is like rib sticking material.
Ooh.
Yeah.
And I keep returning to it over and over again and watching it, 140 pounds, but then reading
it in different facets and different seasons.
And with different people, I have like book, like I do one-on-one book club.
I don't do group book club, but like my wife and I will book club and like a friend and
I will do a different book club or whatever.
And we kind of just read the same book at the same time and then we have thoughts about
it.
But doing that with with your work, I'm like, oh, I didn't see it that way or I didn't
see it that way.
And the things that resonate with people who read it based on their own griefs and their
own life experiences and what they find funny is just remarkable.
So I'm just, I'm very excited for what you make next.
I think that's a perfect place to end.
I'm not going to take you anywhere else because I think kind of opening, I think you're a
great artist portal opener.
It's like you open portals for yourself and then you invite other people to walk through
them artistically through theater through books soon to be through comedy.
And I would love to know where people can find you right now, what you want them to do
about it.
I know you've got a podcast, you've got a sub stack, you obviously have this book.
And then we will participate in what exists and then hold our breath and be excited for
what's to come.
Well, I'm holding my breath too.
I'm like, oh, collective.
I mean, but that's the creative process, right?
Like it's just like, I don't, it's always terrifying, which makes me feel like, no, you're exactly
where you're supposed to be.
And then my perfection itself is like, are you though?
You can find me on my website at susanleo.io.me and that holds all of my things.
Instagram @susanleo.io.
Easiest way to know what's going on because there's always a lot going on is subscribing
to my sub stack, live like your mortal, become a paid subscriber.
So I can pay for my hoji chat, he lattes and write stuff because I have to do with oat milk
because otherwise I go to the bathroom.
But yeah, so those are the ways to engage.
I do have a podcast called Model Minority Moms grappling with being everything for everyone
else, but yourself.
With parenting career relationships, all that jazz.
But yeah, find me on the inner webs.
Oh, and you can watch 140 pounds.
You can stream it from my website.
Oh, that's exciting.
Yeah, for $4.99, you can stream it and you can watch it or you can buy it and just watch
it over and over again.
That's time forever.
Yeah.
Oh, and I have a TEDx talk on YouTube called How to Make Peace with Your Belly Fat.
So many ways to engage with me and please pick up the book, the manicurist daughter.
The audiobook was a mess listen in the month for Apple Books, which was great.
So if you're like, because there's some Vietnamese in the book, if you're like, I don't know
my favorite part.
It's my wife read the book and I listen to the book and I said, so help me if I actually read.
I keep paper books of books I want to keep forever.
That's my, I like, listen to the audiobook first and then if I super love it, I buy the copy
the book.
So I buy books twice, basically, is what I'm telling you.
Thank you for your time.
It's so silly how my brain works, but I'm like, we have to hear it first and then we decide
if we read it.
It's so funny.
But my wife read the book and she was like, I wish I had done the audiobook as well.
And so now she's going to get the audiobook because she's like, I need to hear Susan say
it in all of the different accents and all of the different characters and the way.
Reminded me so much of 140 pounds how you embodied your dad and embodied your aunts and embodied
your grandpa.
Like, everybody got embodied in their own way through the reading of the audiobook and
I was like, I kind of know these people too.
In addition to just knowing you.
Love people to pull my siblings aside and be like, hey, are you the nice brother or the
mean brother?
Yeah, their siblings were the people I was the most angry with the most off.
They were like, can you all get your shit together?
We just still don't talk about any of it.
And we just pretend I'm doing none of this.
But what's new, right?
It's just like kind of an echoing of childhood patterns, right?
So it's just kind of like, yeah, we're just we're just older and with more wrinkles, you
know?
Yeah, we may have more money and more autonomy and more wrinkles, but we're still pretty consistent.
Yeah, everyone's still definitely on brand Shelby.
Susan, thank you so much for spending time with me today.
Yeah, Ditto.
I loved your questions.
I love your energy.
I love how we've just been journeying on grief together.
You know, I think we connected and it was a 2019.
I think it was 2019.
Yeah.
So it's just been wonderful to see your rise and evolution and because I don't have growing
up, I didn't have a lot of friends to talk to about grief, you know?
So it's just beautiful that we can connect on this and it's not like hidden or shameful
or awkward.
You know, it's just like, yeah, this is a part dying is a part of living.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm glad I can do that with you.
Same.
Thank you so much.
I'm so glad that just like, we got to share aerospace today.
Go buy Susan's book, engage with all of her stuff and we'll see you next time, grief
growers.
I love you Shelby.
Thank you.
Bye.
That's all for this episode of "Greve Grower."
Thank you so very much for joining me and Susan today.
If you're looking for grief support beyond this show, you can find free workshops, blog
articles and my signature.
What's your grief support style quiz at Shelby for Scythia.com/links?
And if you'd like to get support from me for your uni-gloss experience, do join us in
life after laws academy, my online course in community.
I'll walk you through my five-step grief framework for rebuilding after-loss and you can
get live coaching from me every single week to answer your questions.
Replays are always available if you can't attend live.
It's just $33 a month to join or $22 a month if you're marginalized or financially stressed
griefer of any flavor.
And you can cancel at any time.
If this podcast felt validating, comforting, educational or otherwise helpful to you in
life after-loss, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify.
And be sure to share grief grower with a friend because you never know what someone you love
is going through.
Grief grower is hosted by me, Shelby for Scythia and the theme music is composed by Eddie
Goldstein.
Until next time, grief growers, I see you.
I am so proud of you and the work that you're doing in the world.
And I love you.
Because even through grief, we are growing.
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