Some of the deaths you live through don't come with a funeral.

Lori opens this one by reading a piece she found called The 7 Deaths You Experience Without Physically Dying, by John Roma. Identity. Relationships. A dream. A belief system. The future you had already pictured. Tammy listens, and says she has been through almost all seven in a single day.

What follows is the two of them going through the list honestly. Tammy on questioning everything she was taught growing up Southern Baptist. Lori on being 18, watching her parents divorce, and wanting her mother back badly enough to pay for weekly lunches she could barely afford. Tammy on the boundary she set to stay sober, and on choosing not to attend her mother's funeral after thirteen years of silence.

Near the middle, Tammy describes smelling cigarettes and perfume in a house where nobody smokes, and knowing. Then, for the first time in fifty-seven years, feeling how much her mother loved her.

Tammy works out on tape that she has been through six of the seven and is sitting in the last one, the death of needing to know who she is becoming. She sets that as her intention for the month.

No guest this week. Just the two of them, which is when this show is at its most itself.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open

0:33 Welcome to Episode 16

1:33 The seven deaths, read aloud

7:05 Caterpillar goo, and the in-between

8:50 Lori: if you'd asked me a year ago

12:21 The prayer, and the violinist in Malaga

14:19 The death of a belief system

16:12 The hardest one: relationships

18:19 Adult children and their parents

22:30 Tammy: my mother cut ties, not me

26:10 The boundary that kept her sober

37:23 The funeral she chose not to attend

44:55 Floating in the in-between

59:57 Loving who you were, flaws and all

1:05:01 I'm a badass

LINKS

The United States of Us: https://tammygreenmitchell.com

The seven deaths piece read in this episode is by John Roma, from the Healer page. Used with permission. https://facebook.com/john.roma.31149

A NOTE BEFORE YOU LISTEN

Around 21 minutes, Lori shares something from her childhood that may be hard to hear. If it brings something up for you, talk to someone you trust. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.