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[0:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Hello, welcome to the Drama Book Show. My name is Mark-Eugene Garcia. I'm David Rigano.

[0:23] David Rigano: And this is episode 27. 27. Wow, almost 30. Yep, almost there. And tonight we have a kind of a different one. Yeah, we have a special episode tonight. Tonight's episode really deals with grief. Yeah. The book is called Normal Broken: The Grief Companion For When It’s Time To Heal But You're Not Sure You Want To. And that's important because I think a lot of times we talk about or we think about, I have to heal now. Yeah. And this is more about you owning your healing. Mm hmm. It was written by Kelly Cervantes, who is married to Miguel Cervantes, who at this point was Alexander Hamilton. Yeah, Hamilton was playing Hamilton at the time he took a night off from the show. Yeah, to come and co-moderate this event with his wife and talk about the experience that the two of them had.

Yeah. And I really want to let them speak for themselves. Yeah. And just let you guys... This was one that... It hit very hard. Yeah, it hit. A lot of people really opened up with this one. And as I said last time, this is a memoir. Yeah. But it's also a self-help book. Even just if we look at some of these chapter titles, When Getting Out Of Bed Deserves A Medal, When You Realize We All Grieve Differently, When The Voice In The Back Of Your Head Won't Shut Up. So it's... It was a very healing night. Yeah. It was probably the first time that we questioned whether or not we were going to put an episode out. Because so much was revealed with our guests, with each other. And ultimately, like with permission, obviously, this is happening.

But it was such a powerful night. Very personal. Yeah, that everyone walked away with a full heart. And it was just beautiful. And we're about to let you guys jump into that. Yeah, here we go. All right.

[2:26] Miguel Cervantes: Hi, Brian. Thank you for coming. Hey, everyone, come on in. And thank you for coming out on a rainy Tuesday night. If you have any friends who are seeing Hamilton tonight, I'm super sorry. I know it's going to be great. I'm sure it's going to be amazing. I actually purchased tickets for a friend of mine for tonight and had to go back and say, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm not there. But to start off here, I just want to do a quick sing-along. I'm just going to do a quick sing-along. I'm going to point to you. Jackson, you're not allowed to say anything because you know that you're not allowed to play along. Everyone else, play along. Sing along. When I point to you, it's your line. It goes like this.

Well, the rain had got around us, and the skies had sunken in. The flowers had turned to sand in the mainland. You're rich, you get your name, but give them what you gain. And the world's going to know your name. What's your name, man? OK, that was OK. That's all right. I feel like some of you wanted to say Alexander Hamilton or something. You weren't sure. But the words we're looking for are, what's your name, man? So loud and proud. That was like rehearsal, like Broadway. Right into rehearsal. And then we'll do it again. Well, the word got around us, and the skies had sunken in. The flowers had turned to sand in the mainland. You're rich, you get your name, but give them what you gain. And the world's going to know your name. What's your name, man? Yeah, we're talking. Nice. And then I will say Alexander Hamilton. I think there's Alexander Hamilton. There's so many things I haven't done. But just you wait, just you wait.

[5:01] ♪ Musical number: "History Has Its Eyes on You" — performed by Miguel Cervantes ♪

[6:28] Miguel Cervantes: Thank you so much. Has anybody heard Hamilton, the musical Hamilton?

[6:37] Audience: I've never heard it.

[6:38] Miguel Cervantes: You've never heard it? Yeah, you've never heard it. If you know, that was actually not how that song goes. That was actually a mashup of three different songs. Do you know which songs they were? The first one.

[6:51] Audience: What do you mean?

[6:53] Miguel Cervantes: No, they were all Hamilton songs. They were all Hamilton songs. The first, Alexander Hamilton. Mashup, man, almost. History has its eyes on you. The name of that song is the Ham Jam. They sell those at the bar. They sell them at the bar with coffee. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for coming to this event. I like to think of myself as a wind-up monkey, that you wind it up and makes a lot of noise. So make sure that you look, please look over this way. Look at me, look at me, look at me so that I can point you in the direction where you should be looking. In my job, when I finish doing my work, people clap and they stand and they show their appreciation for the work that I have done.

There are people in this world who deserve those kinds of accolades so much more than me and so much more than the folks on stage, and my wife is one of them. I have watched her turn into a superhero among humans. Among superhero humans, she's become one of them, if not the greatest one in my book. To watch how she navigated my daughter's illness, how she navigated her death, how she kept our family together, how she dealt with all of those things that come along with caring for a disabled person, family member, she carried so much of it on her shoulders, and I don't think I could ever express to her how proud I am and grateful for the work that she did while I was doing the work that I do. For her and those like her who deserve to be applauded and to be screamed and yelled for, please welcome my amazing wife.

[8:47] Kelly Cervantes: Thank you all for coming out today. So good to see you all. Hi, friends. Kelly wrote a book. This book right here. That's quite amazing where the book came from and how. Yeah. And so I want to start by how many of folks know our story? Some of you may know pretty intimately our story. I watched her turn from event coordinator, sugar mama. She had a job on the east side at a restaurant, and I was a struggling actor, and she kept us afloat. And then as Hamilton came into our world, and Adelaide came into our world, and epilepsy, and disability, and meds, and medical things came into our world. I watched her turn from wife to nurse, to pharmacist, and then into a writer as Adelaide's life was in the second half.

And I watched this transformation into maybe it was therapy. Maybe it was whatever. Whatever she's going to tell you that it was, I watched it help people. I watched people respond to what she was saying with this blog. So please tell everyone where this came from.

[10:06] Kelly Cervantes: So the book came from writing was more healing to me than anything else. I am a huge proponent, advocate for talk therapy. I love my psych meds, all of them. Wouldn't be here today without them. But the thing that helped me the most was writing. And there's all sorts of scientific studies. Your thoughts in the back of your head are all amorphous, and ambiguous, and terrifying. And then when you can move them into the front of your brain, and you can confine those emotions to letters, and sentences, and paragraphs, you can process them, and they become a little less scary. And writing helped me while Adelaide was alive. It certainly helped me immensely after she passed. And through the blog, I realized that I'm just not that special.

And I mean that in the nicest way possible. I am special in all of the ways that Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street taught me that I was. But what I experienced, the grief I experienced, that is not unique to me. The way that it affected my life, the way that the grief manifested in my life, none of that was unique to me. And by writing my story, and sharing it through the blog, and getting this feedback, and realizing that my journey, that my fear of going to the grocery store, my listening to my daughter's oxygen concentrator, all of these things that I thought were like crazy weird, and I was like, out of my mind, were actually things that other people have told me that they also had issues with.

Once I want to say came out for air, but once I decided that I was going to choose to heal, I didn't know what to do with my life, because I had quit that job to take care of our family. And then Adelaide was my life. She was my day to day. And then I was forced into retirement from that job when she passed away. And then I was left with, I didn't know what the heck to do with my life. And writing felt natural writing felt like the next progression. And that is where this book was born out of, because it felt like the next right step. And for anyone who has experienced deep loss or grief, they know that sometimes you just have to take the next natural step forward.

[12:37] Kelly Cervantes: So in that journey that she was taking after our daughter died in October of 2019, Hamilton ended in Chicago in January of 2020. I was supposed to start in, I started on Broadway in March of 2020, March 3rd. Anybody know what happened a couple of weeks after that? March 11th happened. And I made my way back to Chicago so that we could be there for the lockdown.

[13:08] Kelly Cervantes: So now we're sitting together as a different family than we were before as the whole world was in shock and suffering and we had our own suffering on top of it and watching the world suffer and we're suffering and I think all of that suffering soup was part of our daily life and we found ourselves not at odds, not angry, but very, very evidently not in the same place. Right? We were this was our daughter together and we had grieved her together when she was alive, very similar grieving journeys. We would check in with each other about once a week to make sure that we were on the same page while she was alive and you don't just grieve someone when they pass away. A lot of times you are grieving them while they are alive.

In our case, we were grieving the milestones that our daughter wasn't going to make. I was grieving that I was never going to attend her dance recital. Miguel was grieving that he was never going to walk her down the aisle. And through all of that, we were on the same path holding hands together and then she died and it was as if our paths just separated and went wildly different directions. I was a hysterical sobbing mess on the floor, couldn't leave our house, couldn't talk to people, and he was back on stage 10 days later because he had to be. But that didn't necessarily make it easier for me to see him being okay when I was so clearly not okay. We actually attended a therapy session, a marriage therapy session, and I remember sitting there and I'm crying and Miguel's sitting there and the therapist was like, "Miguel, why don't you take your wife's hand? Why don't you try and comfort her?" And what did you say?

[15:10] Miguel Cervantes: I don't know, but there's probably something like, "I don't know if that's what she wants me to do." You know, I mean, I feel like I was like, I would if I knew that would help. Because I was going on my path thinking no one can help. I'm doing this. No one can say and read the book. There's a whole chapter about this, about nothing anyone can say or do can help me. So how can I be arrogant to say that I can help her? And that's, I think, an important part of what we were learning in the time because I would feel guilty that I wasn't on the floor crying or that I wasn't feeling these sort of moments like she was. We watched her as a family and allowed her the time that she needed to do that, but I didn't. In fact, I went, now look, it's not fair.

It's not fair. I would go to Hamilton and put on this costume and do my hair back and put a microphone on and people would say, "Hey, how do you do that every night?" And I was like, "Because that's not my life. That's somebody else's life. That is a whole other person's child. That's a whole other person's journey. And I get to actually hide from my own place within this other story." So that I think that's an important and maybe some other human being wouldn't be able to do it that way, would find it more difficult, but I found some sort of peace in that and also guilt that I was doing this while she was doing something else.

[16:47] Kelly Cervantes: What I think we came to realize in those differing grieving journeys was that I wanted to grieve with someone holding my hands and just sitting with me and that was something that I needed. Miguel did not. He preferred to grieve alone. He would later tell me that he would be out walking the dogs and like picking up dog poop and crying while he was cleaning up after the dogs. And it came to a point where I realized that he was not going to be able to be there for me in the way that I needed someone to be there for me. And so I started to outsource that. And I think that it is something that we put so much on our significant others to be the end-all be-all everything in our relationships. And the reality of the situation is that we were both grieving in wildly different ways and he couldn't be there for me and he didn't need me to be there for him.

If your sink is broken and neither you nor your loved one can fix it, you don't get mad at each other. You call a plumber. You outsource the problem. And so that was how I chose to handle this. So when it was the one-year anniversary of Adelaide's death, I knew I was gonna be a disaster. I knew I was gonna need help. And so I called my best friend from Chicago to come in and to just be with me because she was also going to be grieving Adelaide. She had been with us through all of that and she could sit there and ugly cry with me in bed and then pull me out of it with jokes, mostly at Miguel's expense. And see, I helped and that worked. And then over time, Miguel would come down in the morning and you were going to get coffee and you just said very nonchalantly, "I was routing the shower last night and I was thinking about Adelaide and how she will never live in this house."

And I started crying and I was like, I just gave him a big hug and said thank you because it meant everything to me just to know that I wasn't the only one in this house who was grieving, even if he didn't need me there or want me there in those moments, that he could share that with me after the fact so that I could feel a little less alone in my grief journey. That meant everything to me.

[19:24] Kelly Cervantes: I also also a chapter in the book about how this is okay. I think we came to the idea that it was all right for us to be in different places. No one can prescribe to you how you're supposed to do it, you know what I mean? And I think that was something important for us to realize for the health of our own marriage, for the health of our relationship, aside from our parent being parents to our amazing children. But as individual humans sharing space together, to be able to walk our own paths was, I think, pretty weightlifting to understand that we weren't in competition with each other. And I think that's a whole thing in and of itself, this idea that, but I don't know why we do it, but we naturally want to compete or compare our grief.

And I am actually gonna read a section of the book and it's in the prologue because I felt this was so important. So one last thing I need you to know, grief should never be a competition. Mark Twain said, "Nothing that grieves us can be called little by the eternal laws of proportion. A child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size. Whether you are showing up today having lost a parent, spouse, friend, or child, whether you are grieving your previous life, a career, a version of yourself, or a future life you had envisioned, whether you are grieving someone who was deeply alive but so very far away, your grief is valid." And that piece was just so important to me to get out at the beginning because there's a whole chapter on comparative and competitive grief, but it does no one any good.

It doesn't do you any good. It doesn't do the other person any good. What is the most important thing is just to be able to sit with the other person, to show empathy and to have compassion. And I don't know who decided that child loss was like the holy grail of grief, but no one gave me a shiny medal and said that I won grief when my daughter died. So I disavow that and say that loss is loss and the most important thing is just to honor whatever that person is feeling and to honor your own feelings as well.

[21:55] Miguel Cervantes: While we're on this like really uplifting subject, what was one of them? I guess we can go both like what was the easiest part to write? Like where did you find yourself just going like a freight train and then where did you get stuck? That's maybe stuck or difficult or whatever.

[22:06] Kelly Cervantes: I think the easiest chapter to write was when there are anniversaries or other meaningful dates. So I don't know how many have read the book, but the chapters are all titled "When Getting Out of the Bed Deserves a Medal," "When You're Facing an Anniversary or Other Meaningful Date," "When You're Ready to Be Okay," the idea being that you can read the book cover to cover, but you can also take it whatever chapter you are feeling on that day because grief is not linear. I do not pretend that it is. So if you are feeling chapter 2 and then chapter 10 and then chapter 4, you do you, boo, and you find the chapter, you find the companion that you need for that day. To that end, when you're facing anniversaries or other meaningful dates, I actually just wanted it to say one, they suck, two, anticipating is often worse than the day, and three, they are only 24 hours and just leave it at that.

And my editor said no. I actually had to flush those ideas out, so I did. But I do think that those dates do just suck and sometimes just letting them suck is the best thing that you can do and letting how you work through them change over time as your grief changes over time as you change over time.

[23:25] Kelly Cervantes: The hardest chapter to write was when you're facing the death and what comes after. And that was mostly because every other chapter in this book I had processed and worked through in my blogs, in my journals, in therapy with Miguel. It had been a process that I was working through and so writing those chapters felt much more natural. I had not processed the moment of Adelaide's death until I wrote this book because I felt like it was necessary. And that was, I don't detail it in the book, those 24 hours are mine and I don't feel a need to share them. But I do think that there is a lot of trauma around when that person dies or when you get that phone call that someone is no longer in your life, whatever reason they have left your life.

And I had not faced that until I wrote this book and so that was extraordinarily emotionally challenging because that was all very fresh processing. And I feel like the way that chapter is written is a little bit different than the others, but that may just be something that I noticed.

[24:38] Miguel Cervantes: Yeah, that one, that was a tough one. It's an important one. I really do think that it's a really important chapter, but it was not my favorite.

[24:48] Kelly Cervantes: Right, and a super breeze to go through in the audiobook, right? That was not a fun one. That one might have taken a handful of takes and a very compassionate thing. Thankfully, as we are now four years, four years removed from the loss of our daughter, we meet people all the time. I meet people all the time and something we talked about very early is when someone, when you meet someone new and they say, "Oh, do you have kids?" That's a great question, you know what I mean? Huh? And then you're in this sort of crossroads to say, "Okay, what do I say here? What do I do here? What is the right answer for me? What is the right answer for them? What is the right answer for the moment that I'm standing in?

Does this need to be a sort of conversation?" And we've each come up with our own sort of version of that conversation, but her version was like, "I have this Vanessa's that she's not listening," but and that's what we just, we've adopted. We've adopted Vanessa and that's as part of our family now as the last three years, two years, I liked it. It's over two years. So let's say three, but the adopters official, she joined our family two years ago. And so that question even, it's even a week, you know? I mean, huh? And then before she came to live with us, I would sometimes say, "My son is a let." That's the answer.

[26:17] Kelly Cervantes: She, however, would say something markedly different to some random people, saying, this is my story, and I'm going to tell it to you right now, and it just lays over into an unbelievable uncomfortable not knowing what to say. You know what I mean? And so I lead to the question of when someone finds out about your grief, about your loss, about your story, and they don't know what to say, if you could crawl into their brain and tell them, what would you tell them to say? I am so incredibly sorry. That really freaking sucks. What was she like? I was at one of Jackson's soccer practices, and it was probably a year or so after Adelaide had passed, because I was actually leaving the house on my own, and that was not something I did.

Certainly where I was going to meet strangers. So when we moved from Chicago back to New Jersey, I would send Miguel out to meet all of our new neighbors or any parents of Jackson's friends. I refused to do that myself so that he could have those awkward conversations on my behalf, and warn and prep everyone first, and then eventually got to the place where I was like, so I met Jackson's soccer practice, and this woman walks by, and she smiles, and I smile back, and then I think, oh crap, what have I done? Now she's going to come talk to me, and she did. And we went through the whole thing. Oh, you're Jackson's mom. It's so nice to meet you. Do you have other kids? And I was like, oh, yep. We have a daughter who passed away about a year ago, and that's what she said to me.

I'm so sorry. What was she like? It was magic, because lose someone, the number one fear is that they're going to be forgotten. And to have someone not crumble themselves, to not make it about them and be like, oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry. My friend lost someone, or I lost this person, to not make it about them, to not morbidly ask questions about her loss, or her death, or her conditions, but to be genuinely interested in her and what she was like, that was everything to me, because every parent wants to talk about their kids, whether they're here or not. You always want to talk about your loved ones. And so that was the perfect response to me. I don't think that there's anything. It certainly beats she's in a better place now, or at least she's not suffering, or any sentiment that begins with at least, or any of those ones, which I have now come to accept that is that person's issues, and it is not mine. They just don't know what to say, and they are uncomfortable, and I'm going to leave that uncomfortableness with them. But what was she like?

[29:43] Miguel Cervantes: We've talked a lot. What do you have to say?

[29:48] Kelly Cervantes: Oh, dear. You play soccer. Remember that time you played soccer? No. Right. We did COVID soccer. Well, that's something they have to know about anything. Do you find yourself when something like this, you get to the point where it is just part of your life, it's just a fact of your life, where it becomes, and you have addressed this in what your MO is for when people ask you certain questions, but you're just more comfortable saying things that you realize after they come out of your mouth are really maybe morbid for someone who doesn't have to deal with that being a part of their daily life. And then how do you, this is coming off of what you were just saying, but how do you treat that when there is something that you've almost become desensitized to the morbidity because it's normalized for you?

It's interesting. This was something that I got used to before Adelaide died because we would have, we had friends come over and Adelaide was, she was in hospice or close to, or we had found out that it was neurodegenerative and that she was going to be dying. I don't think she was in hospice yet. And we're telling this to them and just telling them as if we were saying Adelaide went to dinner last night and she lost it and had to go to the bathroom and just cry it out for herself. And then I had to check myself and be like, oh, children dying is not a normal thing that people come across in their everyday life. It's just normal to my life. That said, so I do think that there is, I have had to learn to soften my responses and the way that I deliver things, as Miguel will laugh about because that is not, I tend to be very direct and blunt.

For me, as I grew more comfortable moving in with my grief, because grief isn't something that you get over. It's not something that you move on from. A friend of mine and I quote him in the book, he has this beautiful passage where he talks about how you have to move in with your grief and you accept it. And it's something that grows with you and you continue to live the rest of your life with that grief because grief is the same is on the other side of the same coin as love. So I am never going to get over the grief of my daughter because I'm never going to stop loving her. And so for anyone to think that one day I'm not going to be grieving her, that is just incredibly ignorant. I grew comfortable with my own grief and living with it and allowing it to be a part of me forever and ever.

If someone else is not comfortable with grief, then that's on them and I can leave it with them. I'm like, that's because I'm not the same person that I was before Adelaide died. I'm not the same person that I was before she was born, before I became a mother. And I'm proud of the person that I am now. Yes, my reality may have slightly harsher edges than a lot of people are comfortable with, but I'm not going to change that about me or about my past or shelter people from that because that is part of who I am and I'm comfortable with it because I've moved in with that grief and I've welcomed it. And I accept it and I love it because it is love.

[33:23] Kelly Cervantes: Someone asked a question about another one of these that we did and someone said, these conversations that we have around death and dying and grief, how do I address this, like what we were just talking about? And specifically with young people, our children and our young people. These days it was a really awesome young person who was talking about feeling hesitant about talking about how they felt, what they were feeling and hopefully these days those feelings are more, people feel more comfortable expressing themselves. I think we have been very comfortable expressing the idea of death and the idea of loss with our kids. Even Anessa knows who Adelaide is, was, she's our daughter and she's dead.

She's also four. What that means is not quite clear. Her biological sisters are in Texas with other family members and one day she said, my sister Amelia is also dead and I was like, no, she's in Texas. She is also not here. But it's different. That's a different kind of not here and we'll talk about that later. But the idea to her as she gets older will not be something like, wait, what? She will begin to learn about that as well because that is part of the discussion, Jackson knew his whole life about the situation with his sister. We didn't, we never sugarcoated it. We never said, Hey, we're really hoping we were like, wait, this is what it is. And I think that's an important part of the grief process.

Also the death process also to say being all of us. That's something we all can share. That is how we are connected. Death is normal. It is just as normal as birth. So let's, it doesn't have to, I don't think it has to be this. It is a painful topic. It can be very painful, but it doesn't have to be something that we're ashamed of. We should normalize it and open those conversations and allow our young people to be comfortable.

[36:00] Audience Member: Who else? I don't really have a question for Sid, but I want to thank you so much for writing this book. When our little one was younger, all the moms in the class went out to dinner. I think there were nine of us. And every single woman at that table had either had a miscarriage or was very close to somebody who had. And I'm like, this is not the happiest of conversations, but I'm so glad we're having it. It's so often brushed under the table. You don't discuss it. You don't tell anyone you're pregnant for the first three months because if you lose it, then you lose the baby. Our losses were very early. And then you're walking around this bunk in depression. Nobody knows why. Because you couldn't share that joy or that grief.

So it's so important to have these conversations. We lost our niece, Maddie, at seven days old. She was born with brain cancer. And we had never seen a doctor in 30 years that we had never in his life seen. And it was this whole journey. We basically kept her going to be able to donate her organs. And my sister just had a C-section, so I was in the hospital with her the whole time. My sister has gracefully moved on from that, and she has two beautiful children. My brother-in-law, nine years later, is a complete hot mess. One of the books is going to him, and I just hope and pray that I give him his book and he reads it because he is so stuck in that grief and not understanding the joy and the love that he has. So I cannot thank you.

[37:55] Kelly Cervantes: Thank you for sharing that, and I'm so sorry for your family's losses. I did the subtitle the way that I did, the when it's time to heal but you're not sure you want to because every other grief book that I picked up or that was sent to me by my mental health therapist mother and stacked by the side of my bed that was this high, they all assumed that I wanted to heal, and I didn't at that time. And so I struggled with that because I couldn't even get through the first chapter because there was an assumption being made, and I wasn't there yet. And so that was such an important part of this book, was that I don't want to assume that anyone is ready to take that step toward healing. That is a huge assumption to make.

And that is a choice that we have to come to on our own. I want to be remembered because of my children, more than anything else, because I wanted to be there for them. But also, I think because I didn't want to be remembered as like this woman who lost her daughter and then was like this lost soul and grieved forever and ever. Just as I don't want Adelaide to be remembered as this child who suffered and then died. This feisty, sassy girl who, even though she was nonverbal, had no issue telling anyone what she wanted or what she thought.

[39:25] Miguel Cervantes: Grieved and over her lost child forever and ever. I want to be remembered as this woman who had this loss and lived with it and helped advocate and champion for people who had walked a similar path to mine and so I do hope that it reaches him when he's ready for it to reach him because it's a choice that you have to make and it's a really hard one to come up against.

[40:15] Kelly Cervantes: Yeah, thank you. All right, I'm feeling the force in my normal, I don't know, it's natural for me to stand up. Yeah, but I would like to just say thank you for sharing and when I say thank you for sharing, it's not just sharing this book but sharing your story and this is the story even when I first met you all in Chicago and at that point in time, of course, it was Hamilton, but I immediately started following your family story and Adelaide's story and you shared your story early on that allowed people that you didn't even know to go on that journey with you and that journey was awareness which was very important when it comes to children and then the fact that what you were doing was helping normalize what people are so hard to deal with, be it grief, fear, especially when it comes to children, especially when it comes to a child.

And for me to have followed your story and then continue to have these crazy connections, even when you came to talk to my unit about the book, it was one of those because I have been a part of that journey. We're sitting there, both of us have stories and I couldn't be there for you because I'm broken up because I'm thinking about that entire journey, but when I say thank you for sharing your story, because I feel like it makes anyone who has been a part of it better because we see your strength, we see your strength together and that this book is for anyone. You don't even have to have gone through grief because at some point everyone will go through it, so it prepares you not only for what you could have gone through but what you will eventually go through. So thank you again for sharing your story. It's such an honor to be here to support you.

[42:36] Miguel Cervantes: Oh, I'm so honored that you came. I just want to start and I'll let you finish. I think we're almost there, but I think something about that resonates with me and the Hamilton, right? So the Hamilton, this all comes from, for those of you who may not know this, Adelaide was diagnosed with epilepsy in the same month.

[43:00] Kelly Cervantes: Week.

[43:01] Miguel Cervantes: Week, okay, let's get specific. I had my final audition for Lynn and everyone on a Thursday as I was leaving the hospital that she's completely strapped in with the EEG and she was getting a spinal tap and I said, "Hey, I got to go do this thing. I'll be back in a little bit to audition for Hamilton." The Hamilton journey for us and the epilepsy journey were in sync. Her life and the Hamilton in Chicago ended together, the Broadway Hamilton version after COVID started and will be ending in January. But I always say that I hope people think that I was a good Hamilton, right? I hope that's like part of the story, but mostly I hope that because of Hamilton, because of where we got to stand and because of it, I could shine a light on what she was doing.

Look, we should give it all back, keep Hamilton, keep it all, but let us have her daughter. We would do that, right? Those are not the choices that we're given. And so the idea of legacy, leaving something a little bit different, leaving something a little bit different, better than we found it or than we are able to experience, I think is where this starts. The amazing things that she's done with Cure and the work that they've done, the soapbox that Hamilton gave us to be able to raise their message up begins that legacy. And we're sitting here today because without that, there is not this. And never ever do you say one is worth it. You don't say it's worth it because we have known that's not how this works.

But to have watched, to have lived through all of that and then to watch her become this and to affect all these other people, not that it's ever going to make it worth it or make it better, but somehow there's some, I don't know what's the word, it's there's like a, it's not a silver lining, it's not a purpose even, it's what is it? We've said it before, it becomes something deeper, some sort of deeper meaning that we didn't want. And I think, you know, I say I don't believe that everything, that anything happens for a reason, but we can make reason out of anything that happens. And it was really crappy. I am censoring. I fond of four-letter words what happened, but if I can take that experience which I cannot change and use this incredible platform that we were given to shine a light, then at least we can make reason out of it.

Still not worth it, but it's something. And look, maybe somebody reads the words, their life is different and all of a sudden superhero, you know what I mean? I think that's an important part of our story now that as some young guy is going to come in and go be Hamilton. Come on, some young handsome guy is going to go be Hamilton and that story is going to be over. My journey there will be over and then this thing lives on. What she has done, her legacy, Adelaide's legacy, I think also gets to live well beyond all of this, sort of all the standing ovations and all of that stuff. And I don't, and listen, not for nothing, but I do, I have grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle and so I'm really hoping that booked us very well so that I could continue to live.

I also, I hope we help people as well, but I'm the king of the baton cage and a granny cage czar in New Jersey. But mostly I hope that I get to stay home and keep the house clean while she goes out and changes the world in a much more real way than I ever could standing on that stage. So, um, thank you. Please put your hands together for my wife.

[47:50] Kelly Cervantes: Yeah, yeah, there's something that she said that has stuck with me since then. She talked about outsourcing her grief and it was a very specific term that stuck with me because it became something that I ended up doing, not with grief but with my own health and working on getting healthier. I was talking to my mom about that and I had said for a long time vanity and health were the things that kept me in shape, but they weren't doing it anymore. And so I needed to outsource my health to something and found a fitness program that works for me, but it immediately made me think of this book and think of what Kelly said and how sometimes you can't do it all on your own and you so feel like you're supposed to, yeah, and that you're supposed to go and use a very specific resource or something in that realm.

And to know that, okay, I don't have to and to take it upon yourself to say, "All right, this is how I'm going to grieve or this is how I'm going to deal," it was just very powerful. Yeah, and it stuck with me and stayed with me and it made me look at my own life in a way of like, "All right, am I taking on too much? Am I in a place where I need to outsource some of the things that are in my life to other places that can help motivate me and help keep me moving?" And it was a very moving night.

[49:17] Miguel Cervantes: Yeah, yeah, it was really powerful and one that we had to pull multiple guests aside and say, "Just remember that we recorded tonight. Are you on a podcast? Are you good with?" And they all were. And then I think that's something to be said about grief is that at some point in everyone's life they're going to have to grieve something or someone and there will never be a correct way of doing it. And that's a lot of what this says is that it's about finding your way. Yeah, and it's, you don't necessarily have to read it in order and it's, you do you and you grieve you and that's, that goes back to what these chapter titles, when you feel like this, when your greatest fear is socializing, my God, yeah, you can look at this and say, "What's the thing that I need when you feel alone?

Oh, that's what I'm feeling right now," and go to that chapter and this is the resource that I need right now. Yeah, it's just a beautiful book, an incredible resource for you at any time. And the thing with that is it's a book you don't necessarily need to get when you're grieving. You don't have to wait. It's, yeah, it's, as sad as it is, it's going to happen, so have that resource ready and be ready for those moments with this tool written by a wonderful person.

[51:01] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, and they both were just so great and it was so gracious with their own healing process, bringing that to the table with us. And it's interesting because it's not, that's what we do as a community, especially as a theater community, is we bring our stories to the table. And so this, it's a given that this book should be here, not just because of who it's going to have a connection to the theater. Yeah, this, it's also connected because that's what the theater community does, is we heal each other and this book heals and I'm just, I'm very proud to have it.

[51:55] David Rigano: Yeah, what are we delving into next week?

[51:57] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Next week we are delving into Dig/I Need That, or as I like to call it, I Dig That, which are two plays by Teresa Rebeck. She came to the store to talk about the publication of these two plays that were published simultaneous to their runs. Dig was running off-Broadway, I Need That was running on Broadway, and they were both published in this collection together. And we were happy to have the collection here at the store and happy to have her here in the store to have that conversation with you.

[52:31] David Rigano: Yeah, oh, it was great, right? To get to interview such an amazing, such an incredible, legendary playwright.

[52:38] Mark-Eugene Garcia: Yeah, and quite the fireball.

[52:40] David Rigano: Yes, oh yes, we had a good time. We're going to delve into that in the next episode, so remember to follow us on Instagram at Drama Book Show Podcast. Please do follow us on Eventbrite so you know when we have events live in person. All of the books we talk about can be found here at the Drama Bookshop and so can we, and we will see you at the bookshop.