SPEAKER_01 0:00

In Tragedy, a true crime podcast, we discuss missing persons' cases, violent crime, and other sensitive topics that may be difficult for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Our show is a place where every story matters and every voice deserves to be heard. To support this podcast, you can subscribe at www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com for early access to new episodes. And join our Facebook community, Tragedy, a True Crime Podcast, for updates, discussions, and ways to support the families we feature. Welcome to Tragedy A True Crime Podcast. I'm Elisa.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

And I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Grief touches every life, but few people truly understand its depth the way our guest does. Today we're honored to speak with Nick Gaylord, a subject matter expert in grief and the host of the podcast Grief Isn't a Dirty Word. Nick has walked alongside individuals and families through heartbreak, sudden loss, and complicated mourning. He brings not only knowledge but compassion, helping us understand how we survive the unimaginable and sometimes even grow around it. In this conversation, we will explore what grief really looks like, why it doesn't follow a timeline, and how honest dialogue can help remove the stigma around loss. Because grief isn't something to hide, and it certainly isn't a dirty word. Thank you for being here and welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to get to talk to you both again.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

All right, excellent. So before we get into it, we're gonna play a game. And so we're gonna do a series of questions. And um, Elisa, you want to kick us off?

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Yes, we're going to start with very some something very simple, and it is pizza or tacos. Which do you prefer?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

And why pizza? Um oh, and why? I have to actually think about this. So I love pizza and tacos. Um, tacos, I feel like there's not a lot you could do with them as far in terms of variety, a way to change them up. Pizza, there's so many different things you can do with it. And also, I don't know, I've just I I I loved pizza as a kid way before I loved tacos. I was probably an adult before I really enjoyed eating tacos, and I remember eating pizza my entire life. So yeah, I mean, if you put either in front of me, I mean, I might eat the tacos after I eat the pizza if I still have room, but I'm probably gonna go for the pizza first.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

Well, I'm actually there with you because I I I I I enjoy eating tacos, but I'm not really a Mexican food fan anyway. And so as a result, you know, pizza is you know, all what it is. Of course, at least it won't make fun of me because my pizzas are typically boring.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Like a four-year-old.

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Yes, so I typically like extra cheese, pepperoni, but I've started doing something new recently that I ran across, and that is the hot honey drizzle on top of the pepperoni pizza. That's pretty much that's my choice clearly.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

And for me, it's it's tacos. It's it's always tacos because unlike Michael, I am a massive Mexican food fan. And uh like crispy tacos, street tacos, rolled tacos, soft tacos, any kind of guacamole, you give it beans. I love tacos. So that's definitely gonna be it for me.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

See, Michael, you and I are gonna go out to lunch together. Lisa, you and my wife Kim are gonna go out too. She loves Mexican food.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yes, me too. I love it. All right.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

There's nothing that makes Elisa more upset when she finds out that I went to a Mexican restaurant and didn't tell her.

unknown 3:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

I mean, she should be mad at you. You should have told her.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

That's where you see. Okay, there you go. All right. Next question. Tell us about your first car.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

My first car was a 1982 Buickless Saber. Shit. Should I really have said that? Because now somebody's gonna find my profile online and find the first question. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It was an 82 Buickle Saber. Um, it was actually so my dad gave it to me, my dad and my stepmom gave it to me as my first car. It was originally my grandfather's, my father's father's car. Uh, and then he passed, and then uh my it became my dad's car. Um, it was the thing was a boat. This thing was massive. Uh, and it had an eight-track player, which was really cool. When I had gotten the car, my other grandfather, my mom's dad, um he found out that the car had an eight-track player, and he's like, hang on a second, I have a whole bunch of things for you, and gave me a whole slew of eight-tracks, which I listened to in the car. And uh, you know, of course, had a couple friends that made fun of me and was like, you know what, this is badass. I have a car with an eight-track player. Where's yours? And I just owned it and I loved it. Um, that was a great car. Unfortunately, I only had it for about six months before the engine went. Uh, but that was uh that was a beast of a car. I could probably, if I tried, I probably could have fit about 20 people in that car. Oh wow. All right, no, I mean reasonably probably six, you know, three in the front, three in the back. The point is it was a boat. Look, I was once one of nine people in a Dodge Omni in college. So, you know, if you could if I could fit nine people into a Dodge Omni, I could probably fit a handful in more into a Buicla Saber.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

And so with me, I would say that it was uh I had a 79 Land Cruiser, four-door. And so this thing was like a giant bus. Um, four-wheel drive, could crawl up the side of a house if you let it, because the wheels were so far forward on it. And um, I loved it at in line six, and I drove it all through high school. I drove it through most of my time in the Navy, and still today my favorite vehicle I'd ever own.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

I didn't even know that they made Land Cruisers back in '79. Yeah, this one was kind of unique because the 79 Land Cruiser was a very limited edition. They didn't ship very many here. And if you looked at the dash, it actually had all the parts to where you could shift the steering wheel over to the opposite side. And so you could, you know, and it's because they didn't make a different version for Europe or Australia. Right, they just they just shifted the steering column. And it had, like I said, you could if you knew what to do, you could literally move. Actually, I considered moving it one time just out of just to be fun. Um, but I ended up not doing it because I figured it'd be too weird. Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Now for me, this is gonna sound really, really cool. My first car was a Mustang, but it was one of those two-door coupe Mustang two tank kind of things. Um, and it was white and it had a red interior. And my dad got this car for me because he knew I would run into a series of things when I was learning to drive, which did happen. You did. Yes. It um had um what is that thing in the middle? The emergency brake. It this thing didn't work. And the way I found out it didn't work is because I had gone to this local gas station. Um, I did not need to get gas, but the person I was with did. And so I kind of parked off to the side. And this is the this is a hill, a big hill in the town I grew up in. And I was walking over um to the person who was getting gas, my friend, and I they said, Oh, your car is rolling. Uh, and I turned around, it was literally rolling right towards the gas tanks. And so I fortunately it hit one of those yellow poles that did exactly its job, which was to save my car from running into a gas pump. Um, so you know, it was kind of a piece of crap. I ran into a couple of curbs and actually went up said big hill with the emergency brake engaged. So, you know, it it did its job. I ran into things, and I mean I can say I had a Mustang, but it wasn't a cool one. It was that little it was that little short one, right? Like you can picture. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Uh, and then I got a brand new car after that, which I promptly backed into the side of the garage door with the rearview mirror. So I probably needed the Mustang for a few more years, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Sounds like it.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

All right. Last question. Um, what country is high on your list for travel, somewhere you haven't been before?

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Well, I guess I mean, I'll start with the countries of my heritage, which are Greece and Poland. Um, absolutely want to go there. My wife and I have talked about possibly doing a cruise to Greece next year uh for our 20th wedding anniversary in 2027. Um, would love to go to Australia. Uh definitely over to the UK to um, we have some friends in England. Uh, would love to see Ireland, I would love to see Iceland. I almost had an opportunity a few months back for work to do a six-month fully on-site contract in Iceland. Uh, unfortunately, too many other better applicants got it ahead of me and I did not get it, but that would have been really cool because I want to see the northern lights. Um, I think those are probably and and Paris. I want to go to Paris as well and go to France. Um, I know Paris is not a country. Uh that's why I think France.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

I'm glad you pointed that out because I was about to.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yes. There are listen, there are a couple people that might have not caught that, but you know, we're we're not going to judge here. That's right. I think that's a probably a good enough list for now.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

So we talked about going out to Mexican food, um, your wife and I, and we are just going to have to be your travel buddies because you named my three Greece, Australia, and Iceland. Uh, those are mine. So, Mike, well.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Mine is typically New Zealand when this conversation comes up. And so um, I'm a big fly fishing um person. So any person who listens to the show knows I talk about this occasionally. And New Zealand is a kind of one of those more remote fly fishing destinations that's on a lot of people that take it very seriously. It's on their bucket list. Yes. And so therefore, I'm looking forward to making that happen one day.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

100%. And by the way, I'm not sure if I had mentioned this to you guys when I met you, but my wife does run her own travel company. So if you decide to book, then sounds like we have an opportunity here. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

And uh, for the record, we did see the Northern Lights for the first time ever in both of our lives, right, in upstate New York uh a couple of years ago. We knew they were coming. I have this app on my phone that tells you if you have a pretty good shot of seeing them.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

So was it last year, the year before? Uh there there was one point it made it down to like northern Florida. It's right. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah. So that was really, really cool. We did get to see the northern lakes. But I bet it would be even better. Oh, of course. In Iceland. All right. That was fun. Thank you for doing that with us. I think my husband is a little terrified of me now driving the truck now that he knows about the car stories because I don't think he'd heard those before.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

I've always been terrified of driving the truck.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

It's all good. I got under control. All right. So let's shift gears. Michael, why don't you start out by talking about how we met?

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Yes. And so for those listening, um, Elise and I attended Podfest in Orlando. And one of the things that was really interesting about it is if you're a new podcaster, which we're not, I guess we're still new, we're still kind of within that year of trying to figure it out, but we we decided to go there to learn what we didn't know. We didn't really know we didn't know what we didn't know. So it was kind of an idea of getting in front of that and maybe, you know, creating some opportunities and understanding what we need to be educated on, look at different softwares. And, you know, I enjoyed the podfest, um, the time at the podfest. And so, however, we noticed there wasn't really anything with true crime. Not really, not for that one. And so we were trying to figure out how to salvage our trip to get the most out of it. And so we decided to start building relationships. Anyway, Elisa decides to go to a breakout session um regarding, I guess, difficult subjects.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, that's what it was touted as crucial conversations as a podcaster. That's what I thought we were going to.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

And so I didn't I didn't read anything, I just followed her and just did that. I did what I was told, right? And so we go in there and as any good husband would do. That's correct. Um, but we go in there and right away the first speaker is talking about a swingers podcast. And so I looked at her and going, Are you sending me a message? Like, what are we what are we what are we talking about here? Because this is and then the very next person was a Russian sex spy. And so I look at her again, I'm like, what the hell are we doing in here? This is not this is not this is not what I thought it was gonna be. Um, but then there were two other people, three other people, but two people that stuck out to me that I thought were particularly interesting, and and that was there was one lady that she was there, she deals with people and their sobriety problem, you know, sobriety problems, and she's obviously a recovering alcoholic and she's done a good job of helping people in her podcast. And then we met this guy, Nick, who's who's on our show today, for those who aren't paying attention.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

And this ridiculous guy that you guys invested some of your time in, and you probably regretted all of it.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

I think he sat next to the Russian sex by as a matter of fact.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

I did.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yes, I thought so.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Um, but what we found interesting about Nick's um, you know, you know, I guess what he was talking about in the in the breakout session at least is we talk about grief in a in a very different way when it comes to our missing people, and we're we're always seeing that subject matter come up. So we wanted to start diving in deeper. And so it got us really interested in getting to know Nick more and hence why why you're meeting him today.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yeah. Exactly. So we would love to hear about you and what brought you to your podcast.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Sure. So I started podcasting um a little bit more than two years ago, uh, actually, right around two years ago. So it was the very beginning of 2024. I had found myself out of work for the first time pretty much ever. Uh, I was with a company for almost two years. I was on a long-term contract. That contract ended at the end of 2023. I started 2024 without a new contract and obviously trying to find one as quickly as I could. And while I'm reaching out to recruiters and sending out a billion resumes and everything that every unemployed person tried to tries to do, I was talking with a friend of mine who I had worked with at my previous company, who was actually getting ready to start her own podcast. And some point she said, Hey, you should start a podcast. And of course, my first thought is who the hell wants to listen to me talk about anything? And I said, No, I'm not doing a podcast. She's like, just think about it, just just look into it, just give it some thought. Fine. You know, again, friends can be very persuasive. So gave it some thought and ultimately decided, all right, maybe I'll give this a try. I decided on the topic of grief because I didn't want to talk about anything that was going to be overly divisive uh or overly a hot button topic or something that had been done by a lot of other people. Meaning I did not want to do religion. I didn't want to do politics. I didn't want to do sports. Um, I know that you guys dive into this, but I didn't want to do true crime because I had a lot of friends at that time who were either very much listening to true crime podcasts or were thinking about starting their own. In a couple of cases, actually had started their own. Um, I knew it could have probably gotten a lot of listeners, but again, I felt like it was just something that I didn't really want to go into. And again, as far as the other issues, politics, religion, sports, especially, because anybody can talk about sports. I wanted it to be something that I was maybe gonna have to work a little harder to get some people. I wanted it to have some serious impact. And I thought about grief because of the situation that I went through with after losing my dad in May of 2021. Uh, we did not have a spectacular relationship. I was the oldest of his seven children. He was married and divorced five times. He was a man of very little accountability. He uh always kind of lived in the mindset of anything that went wrong in his life was somebody else's fault, even when it wasn't, and it almost never was somebody else's fault. But that's just his outlook. He did not know how to treat people, he knew how to mistreat people um and it cost him a lot of relationships. Cost him obviously his marriages, uh, cost him relationships with some of his children. And some in some degrees, like some you know, somewhat relations somewhat caused a loss of a relationship, a couple of cases entirely. When he was uh declining in health, my three brothers and I and my youngest sister kind of became his caretakers, not because we wanted to, but because he just couldn't do it himself, and because we're not excuse me, because we're not the kind of people who were just going to completely abandon him. Uh so we did, we were his caretakers, and then he died in 2021. And you know, I had always thought that when that day came, I was just gonna kind of move on with my life. Like I didn't think that his death was gonna have that big of an impact. And we were my wife and I were living in Texas at the time. We flew back up to New York, had the funeral, went back, just kind of went back to work, and for a few months I was kind of fine. I didn't really put a lot of thought into it. I was like, all right, it's time to move on because that's what people do when they don't want to face the hard stuff. And four or five months down the road, realized I was not. I had a lot of unprocessed anger that I wasn't dealing with and I didn't know how to deal with. And it was actually my wife who, at some point, when we were having some kind of a conversation and I snapped at her for no reason, she said, I really think you need to talk to somebody. And she was right, and she knew what was going on, even though I didn't. And so I did. I started therapy and found someone uh and started talking with him every week for six months, and that's that six months changed my life. It got me to the point where I was able to release the anger, I was able to forgive him for being who he was. I was able to forgive him for not being who we needed him to be, and I was able to also forgive myself for holding so much anger toward him. Um so I learned a lot about grief because I thought grief was you're sad and you're heartbroken and you're crying all the time. That's that's what we all think grief is. You're we don't know what we don't know, and I sure as hell didn't know anything. I learned that there's so many parts, so many stages to grief and grieving, and I learned that anger is part of grief. And like I said, I was able to fortunately move past all of that and not to forget it, not to just like totally put it out of my life, but I was able to put it in the place that it deserved to be put into. Um and we talked about the anger before. I got to a point where I have released that anger, and I've never been angry at him a day since my end of therapy, which is not something I thought I was ever going to be able to say. Um, so when I decided to start the podcast, it was actually originally named Our Dead Dads. And our dead dads came through conversations with myself, my three younger brothers, and three really close friends who we've all at that point had lost our dads. And it was just kind of a it was a one-line, it was like a joke between all of us. And then when I decided to talk about grief, it just seemed like a natural fit. And it worked in the beginning, and it led to a lot of amazing conversations. I think I did, I think it was around 60 episodes uh before I before I ultimately decided to rebrand in late in summer of 2025, uh, late summer or fall, somewhere around there. I recognized that our dead dads was the foundation of these conversations. This is what got the conversation started. And I wanted to create a platform where people had a safe space to talk about these things, free of any judgment, free of any issues at all, any worries about am I in a good space, am I able to have these conversations? Um, I've always wanted to help people, and I found this podcast as a way to help people, to give some people who had never had a chance to have these conversations, the chance to do so. And I embraced it and I love every single thing that I've done since the beginning of this. But I also recognized late last year that some things needed to change. Not because anything was necessarily broken with the podcast, but I realized that our dead dads, while it was the foundation, it did not represent the work that was being done. And I gave it some thought. I took a little bit of time off. Uh, I took probably about three or four months off from posting new content, though I continued to do a lot of work in the background, and ultimately came up with the name Grief is not a dirty word. And I think that that name tells the entire story about this mission because we were taught, by we I mean adults, uh, people of my age generation. I am 50 at this point, so anybody in or in or around my age group growing up, we were taught to not have these conversations by our parents, by our family members, by, as I like to put it, the adults who raised us. Uh, because I don't want to just pin it on parents and family. It was all the older generation of folks that were at that of that mindset that don't talk about this, move on, get over it, deal with it, just you know, it's it's over. You can't change it. So what are you what are you crying about? What do you just get over it? And it it's not gonna crying about it's not gonna fix anything. I realized that they Didn't want to talk about it because it made them uncomfortable. And because they never addressed it when they were kids growing up because their parents didn't talk to them about it. I don't ever want to blame the adults who raised us for doing a bad job because I don't think they did. I think they did the best they could with the tools they had. The problem was they just didn't have a lot of the tools. And that's not to say that I have all the tools, excuse me, or you have all the tools, or anybody has all the tools, because there's a million, billion, trillion books on grief and loss and sadness, and everybody thinks that they have the best take on it. There's a lot of great information out there. There's a lot of, you know, probably not the most effective information, but you have to go through everything. You have to figure it out. I wasn't trained in this field, so I had to learn a lot. Um, I wasn't trained to be a therapist or a grief counselor or anything like that. It doesn't mean that I won't someday do some training and certifications, but right now, this is based on real life experiences, mine and hearing others, and my overall desire to simply help people, to help people improve their lives, to let people be in a better mental space. Because if we can improve our own mental space, then it can improve so many other things. It can improve our relationships, and it can improve, it can improve how we react to friends or coworkers or family, you know, parents, children, siblings, whoever. Uh it's something that everybody needs. Everybody needs a little bit of therapy. And the problem is therapy is another dirty word in a lot of people's minds. You mentioned therapy to some people. Their instant reaction was going to say, what the hell are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with me. I don't need a therapist. It's not about needing a therapist, it's about needing to have a conversation. It's about needing to talk about all the crap that's stuck in your head that you refuse to deal with because you weren't taught either how to deal with it or that you need to deal with it. And so we on this podcast, we explore everything. The one of the big reasons why I changed it from our dead dads to grief is not a dirty word is because a lot of people who were finding the show later after I started thought that it was specifically about dads and you know losing dads. And it was never intended to be like that. It's yes, the the episodes were mostly about loss due to death, but something that I really wanted to do a lot more exploring on is the idea and the fact that grief is way more than the death of a person. When you're grieving any kind of a loss, you have to recognize that those losses exist. It can be the loss of a job or a relationship, a marriage, uh, a friendship, um, the loss of a home, the loss of um financial independence, the loss of physical independence. If you are in a situation where you get really sick and you need someone else to take care of you, or you're living with a family member, you're in a facility, um, and you are you're unable to take care of yourself, that loss of your own independence, that's something that affects a lot of people. Um, something that I experienced, my wife and I experienced together uh right before Thanksgiving, the loss of a pet. Our cat Maxie, who was pretty much a regular part uh part of the podcast. Uh, she even got up on my desk during some of the interviews, and uh she came up frequently and we would be talking about her in multiple episodes. We had her since she was six weeks old, and she was 19 and a half when she died. We don't have human children. We tried for years and it didn't happen. So she was our baby. She was, you know, our world aside from each other. And it that hit us both really hard, which we knew it was going to. So every loss deserves to be grieved, every loss deserves to be processed.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

No, I love that story. Um, you said something too regarding like therapy and how therapy is uh some people look at it like a stigma or that's a dirty word, as you mentioned. Oh, yeah. And one of the things I always think about is I went to therapy very early in my childhood, so I was probably 13, 14 years old, um, because I was abandoned by my father. And so as a result, I didn't know how to deal with it. But there was obviously someone in my family that noticed it, and they sent me to talk to his name was Dave Buckman. I'll never never forget the guy. He and what's interesting is he gave me um, I call it a tool set that I still use today when it comes to dealing with negative influences in your life. And um I I uh I'm I think I'm fairly well rounded as a result of having those tools.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Isn't it amazing how much better we can become when we put in a little bit of work? That's right. And I'm not saying that I'm perfect, I'm not saying I was cured. I'm not saying that I ever try to set out to cure anybody because I don't. I've had many conversations of my own with other people that were dealing with their own stuff who just a lot of times would randomly come up to me, whether friends or family or coworkers, people whose situations I knew nothing about, and people that I've worked with, this has happened, I don't know, 15, 20 times over the years. Right. I'm convinced that I have a sign over my head that everybody but me can see that says, you can talk to this guy if you have a problem. But people would just you know, I could tell some, yeah. I I get it, I guess so. I mean, I'm I'm honored to be that person. I really am. But I mean, I also like I I like to think that I'm a good judge of character and I can tell when something's bothering people, and um, yeah, sometimes it'll be like, what's going on? And people be like, I'm fine. Like, I'm not so sure who you are. What's what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Are you sure?

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah, and then just kind of like not that I'm trying to, you know, get them to do anything crazy, but eventually people like, yeah, you know, I'm really going through some stuff. And sometimes I might ask, like, do you want to talk about it? Or sometimes they'll say, you know, maybe I've asked people if they want to talk, and sometimes like, nah, I'm all right. And then people they'll later they'll come back, you know, another day later or whatever, and be like, Yeah, you know, maybe I do some need somebody to talk to. Wouldn't can we go talk for a little bit? I like and everybody knowing that I don't have any idea what's coming, but it's not about that. It's just sometimes somebody just needs an outlet to just get some stuff off their chest.

SPEAKER_03 28:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

And I know that if I had if they had asked me if I could talk and I said, you know, I don't know if this is my jam. I'm just like I think you know, you're probably better off just finding somebody who could really help you, then I would have told that person in no uncertain terms that I'm not a safe space for them. Not that I'm a bad person, but that I'm not someone that they can talk to and you know count on in a in a moment of need. And I've always, again, I've always wanted to be that person. I I want to do whatever I can to help people. And I didn't know what was coming in these conversations, but I was like, yeah, you know, whatever, let's go, let's go talk, let's go grab a conference room, let's go grab lunch or whatever. And the common denominator of all those conversations was always the person saying, thank you so much. This really helped. I'm really glad that I was able to just start this conversation. I'm not saying we solved the world's problems in five minutes or 10 minutes or an hour over lunch, but what it frequently did is just got the conversation started for them enough to the point where they were able to continue it afterwards, whether with a person that they needed to address it with, or in some cases with a therapist, with a professional or a grief counselor, or whatever they needed to do. They were able to find a person who was sufficiently adequate in their field and in a level of training to provide the help and the guidance that they needed in their particular situations.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

So when we started this podcast, it really our origin story comes from Michael's um uncle who was murdered and it is not solved. It's been about 12 years, and I think we just decided that we wanted to speak with people, that we wanted to give people an opportunity to say what they wanted to say about their loved one in ways that the media and law enforcement really did not allow them to do. And it I believe we were just going to just stay with Jody Kilgore's story, and then people started reaching out to us. And what has happened, the universe has pushed us in this way where almost every story we have done outside of Joe's, well, every story we have done outside of Jody's story is about missing people. And to me, this is a little bit different. And so there's a I have a couple of questions. One, we're coming to you because we want to get better at what we are doing because we are having people come on who have experienced loss that's uncertain. They do not know where their loved one is. And so my my two-pronged question is one is that a I mean, I there are several different types of griefs, but how do we approach that? That's different to me than my cat passed away. And you and I talked at Podfest. We have a commonality there. My cat of 24 years passed away. Um, so important to me that that I have her tattoo, you know, paw, her paw tattoo is on my arm. But to me, when you don't know what happened to your loved one, that is a little different. And so we just wanted to talk to you about that. And and then just how do we support the people who are coming on? We're interviewing them, and we have people cry, and sometimes I cry, and we just want to be, we want to be more knowledgeable so that we can support our families.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

That's incredible that you guys want to get more into this space because that alone is uh a road that a lot of people will not travel down. Uh, it it's hard enough getting people to talk sometimes about deaths that are final. Uh, you know, that there's whether somebody was murdered or somebody just died in a car accident or old age, whatever. Sometimes it's hard enough getting people to talk about that. For situations such as missing persons, a lot of people don't know what to say. And I will say this there's not always a right thing to say. Because when somebody dies, um, people will say, I like to call them filler lines like, well, they're in a better place, or at least they're not suffering. Um the the we're in a better place gets me all the time, and I just I laugh. And not in a ha ha funny way. I laugh like, man, you just suck and you don't even know it. Um because you you've got to be more compassionate. You like when they say somebody's in a better place, no, they're not. Like, I know my cat's not in a better place, better place is right next to me. That's where better place is for your cat, right next to you. Better case for um for Michael's uncle is still here. That's the better place. As far as what to do with the conversation, ask if you're going to ask somebody how they're doing, ask them how are you today? Um, because grief is different. Like in a situation where a person's missing has never been found, never resolved. That's a completely different kind of ongoing grief that it's grief, it's trauma, it's it's everything. Um let if somebody wants to talk, let them tell their story. Don't try to shorten it, don't try to cut them off. Um, don't try to invalidate what they're saying. Um because nobody knows what to say. I mean, even the person who's experiencing it, it it doesn't matter how long it's been. Uh, because it's not something, and I can't speak from experience, thankfully. But for those that I know that I have spoken with who either have a a relative who is still missing or who at one point was missing and was found, it is not something that there's no way to make it better. And you shouldn't try, but you also shouldn't ignore the person either. If somebody wants to talk, give them the freedom to talk. Um maybe you ask um if uh I don't know, ask them if is there something that I can do for you? Would you like to talk about your person? If they don't want to, they won't. But what helps some people is knowing that other people still want to, that people even through all of what's going on, that people are still remembering him or her that are not yet found. Sometimes it's sometimes people think that it's just uh uh something in the back of their mind that nobody wants to bring up. It's the elephant in the room and they don't know how to bring it up. And there's there's no there's no easy way to have a conversation about this, um, except to maybe let the person who you know, like if if you know someone who who has a relative that or friend has that has not been found yet, um try bringing up a story about the past. A good time, but not necessarily a bad time, but see if it starts some conversation because sometimes the person who is drowning in that grief, who has lost that person, who doesn't know what to do, they might be I don't know, a little bit, I don't know if encouraged is the right word, that somebody wants to talk about their family member and and and not just talk about the fact that they're not found yet. It's it's different than death with you know finality. Um I I I can't remember which guest it was. Um I think it was about a year ago. Somebody, one of my guests had said that um for people who die, there are usually two deaths. Um when they stop breathing, when they you know when they actually physically die, and when their name stops being said. Because you know, for days and a week or so afterwards, there's the wake, there's the funeral, there's everybody stopping by and calling and texting and checking on you, and the conversations are endless. And then slowly the conversations slow down and eventually they stop because most people have to go back to work and they have to live their lives. And it it's it's a really unfortunate part about death. Um, but for anybody who has a missing person, they didn't bury a body, they didn't cremate their loved one, they didn't bury their loved one. Their loved one is still out there somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 38:07

Um, there's actually it's interesting enough, it's changed my perspective on an interview that we just did. And so we interviewed someone, her name is Jeannie Turk, and um, she's the stepdaughter, or so she was stepmother of um one of our missing person cases, Audrey Heron. And one of the things that was interesting when we interviewed her is you know, obviously we're getting there to talk about the day of the case, things like that. And we did talk about that some, but you can tell what was really working for her as far as putting her in good headspace is she told us a number of just fun stories with her interaction with Audrey. And so I was listening to this initially, going, I'm sure, I'm wondering why we're going down this route because we're we're kind of headed down these stories, and it's not really related to the investigation, it's not related to the days disappearing, but we listened and we we just stayed quiet and we listened through it. And I listened to the joy in her voice telling these stories, and I could tell that it was helping her.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

And she still sends me text messages, you know. That is we develop relationships with these families.

SPEAKER_02 39:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

And when we are in a place where it is a story that we have covered, and our family say, Oh my gosh, you're here. We want to meet you. And we go out and we meet them in person, and she does send me text messages. She sent me this really cute one about how Audrey used to sing a song, but she changed up the words. And I was like, I used to do that, and here's the song I used to sing. And yeah, I think you're right. It's like opening a space. I heard you say when we um saw you on the panel, people sometimes struggle with how to open this conversation around grief. And and so sometimes they they don't and they feel like, oh, it's gonna be so hurtful for this person if I bring up whatever it is that happened to them. And you said it's it can actually be more hurtful if you don't. And so we are unintentionally opening these spaces for people that I mean, it just sort of naturally is what is happening for us. So, and it sounds like we're doing the right work. Our very first question almost always that we ask is what do you want people to know about whoever it is? And people will go, oh, he was funny, he liked to fish. And so, right out of the gate, we're giving them an opportunity to have those, you know, have space for those positive memories. And we're doing the right thing by starting. So, what you're talking about is validating that as our initial question.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

A hundred percent. Um, you you guys absolutely are doing the right thing. Again, if somebody doesn't want to talk about it, they'll let you know. They're not gonna say, shit, why are you keep bothering me with this? And why how can you ask questions like that? No, but they're not gonna say that. They're just gonna say, I appreciate it, but I'm not ready. And and if it's really close to when the person went missing, that might be what they say. Or it might be the opposite. It might say, Yeah, you know what, I would love talk because it gets their mind off of the obvious, even for a few minutes. The the the sad reality around missing persons is the longer that somebody is missing, the more likely it is that they will not come back alive. It's it's not meant to be horrible and to be mean. It's also not something that the person who's dealing with a missing person has not relived the reality of a million times. Um, one one case that is very big in the news right now is Nancy Guthrie. Um, her family is just freaking out because there's no leads, there's no information right now, there's they can't figure out a motive. She's 85 years old or 84 years old. Um, she needs medication that was not removed from the house with her. Um they don't know if whoever took her knew enough to get meds. Um I don't know. I mean, but I I hope that she's found safely. Um, I also without trying to be without trying to sound like an asshole here, um actually, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that on this podcast. You can.

SPEAKER_03 42:37

You're you're you're good.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Oh, okay, good. I I say it on my own, but uh I sometimes I forget that I'm on I'm not on my show on somebody else's show. You're fine. Um without you know, coming across as an inconsiderate asshole, which I swear I'm not, I mean, my personal take is if I had to, you know, think of what has happened at this point, I think it's probably very likely that she died and the person or persons who have her have no idea what to do because they know that if she's no longer alive, they probably don't stand a chance of getting the ransom money. I know that there was a big demand for it. Um, when you have something, here, I've got this drink. You want this? Let's negotiate. And you know that there's at least a chance, but you know that I have this drink in my hand, and you know there's a possibility that you could get it. They've been given no indication that she's alive, that she's safe. And I think that one of the main reasons why we know about this case is because of who Savannah Guthrie is.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

And that's not a that's not a dig at Savannah Guthrie. I think she's incredibly talented um in what she does. And I think that also if Savannah. Anna Guthrie were just an average person amongst the 340 million of us that live in this country, most of us would probably have no clue who Nancy Guthrie is or that she was missing. There are so many people that go missing and abducted in this country every single day. Um case that is obviously very well known is the case of Gabby Petito. Um I can't remember if I told you guys about this, but I have had the chance to get to know very well Gabby's parents. Have had all four of her parents, her mom, her stepdad, her dad, her stepmom, on my podcast. We've become very good friends with them. We've had them over for dinner. They've spent we've spent time with them. They're just simply beautiful, amazing people. Uh what they went through with losing Gabby in 2021, um that was a situation where they were, dare I say, fortunate enough to get her back. Not obviously the way they wanted to. Um, but it they also know that it's something that a lot of families don't ever get to experience. Um a lot of people at the time said, oh, well, she just got the attention because she's a beautiful white girl with blonde hair. And that's kind of a shitty thing to say. Whether or not it was true, I don't know. Sometimes, you know, the the really attractive, especially females, are going to, if they're, I don't, I don't know, you know, photogenic or they, you know, if they're great for their have their picture on TV, then some people are gonna say, oh, look at the beautiful girl she's missing, she got kidnapped, oh my god, they're so horrible. As opposed to somebody who's not so physically attractive in other people's eyes that their picture might not look as good on a TV screen. Is it any more or less important and valuable? Is what you know, no human life is more or less valuable than another. And Gabby's parents, I believe, would say that. They have, and I I know that they would say that because they have done in the in the time from when Gabby was um declared officially missing to when she was found, they started the Gabby Petito Foundation, which focuses on preventing domestic violence and also supporting missing persons. Um, the Schmidt's and the Petitos have worked tirelessly in New York, where they were originally all from, in Florida, where they all live now, in Wyoming, where Gabby was found, and in other states, um, in Utah, New Mexico, and other in multiple states to make change happen, to help um find resource to to identify resources for missing persons to be found to put more awareness on people who are missing. Um, they've done a lot of work with the indigenous community. Um, because uh like Jim, her stepdad um was telling me, I think that when Gabby had gone missing um in Wyoming, uh, there were, I think, at the time, two other cases of um indigenous women who had gone missing who received no media attention. Uh, and there are so many people who are missing and will unfortunately probably never be found that don't get the level of publicity and the level of coverage as Gabby Petito or as Nancy Guthrie or as someone who is, for whatever reason, now, you know, willingly or unwillingly, a public figure. Uh, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. I wish that every face and every name of every person who goes missing could be plastered all over TV. I mean, shit, I wish that people would stop abducting people and stop kidnapping people and stop murdering people for no goddamn reason whatsoever.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

It's pointless. It doesn't need to be happening. Yet we live in a country, in a society where we're so fucking self-destructive and all we know how to do is harm each other when we could be helping each other.

SPEAKER_03 48:36

One of the types of grief that we typically see in our cases is, and and we and we we try to acknowledge it because it's something that I think a lot of people don't understand. But in almost every one of our cases, we're in a situation where there's at least one person that refuses to be involved in the case, refuses to be questioned by police, refuses to come on our podcast, obviously, and they just completely disconnect. And I think a lot of people lose the understanding of what that means. They instantly go to, oh, that person's guilty of something. But um, in some cases that might be true, you know, maybe that's the reason. But we also know that retreat is a grief response. And so I was kind of curious what your feedback is on that and and you know what what your thoughts are on it.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

My feedback with that would be don't be so quick to judge. If the police need to investigate, they'll investigate. That's what the police are there for. If you're not a cop, shut the fuck up. Let the cops do their job. If they need to investigate the person, they will. It is a grief response. And some people when they are in the middle of this, they want to get in front of a microphone. They want to scream it from the rooftops, I want my person back. What is going on? They want everybody to know that their person is missing and they want all the help they can possibly get. Some people want to go on podcasts, some people want to be the family representative to talk and try to coordinate. Some people don't. Some people need to process the like when you're when you're dealing with a loss, uh uh when somebody dies or somebody goes missing, they don't people don't always want to be the person who's going to get in front of a microphone or who's going to even be engaging in a private conversation. Sometimes they need to just be left alone. And there's nothing wrong with that. Again, for for whatever's going on, if there's a reason to investigate, law enforcement will do their job. Until that, until unless if you are law enforcement involved in that case, don't become a keyboard sleuth. Don't try to be like, oh, well, what about this? What about this? Just just let the experts do their job. For and for everybody who's listening who hears me say that, whatever you field you work in, be an expert in that field. Don't everybody who thinks that they're a homegrown detective just because they have an internet connection and a camera and a TikTok account, stop. It's not the case. Like, just sometimes you need to just leave people alone. Especially in some of these cases where it gets all public and everybody's like, oh, well, I want to talk to them. Like sometimes if they want to talk, they'll talk to you. If they don't, leave them alone. Don't judge them.

SPEAKER_01 51:29

This aligns very much with a conversation that um we have in an in episode 50. We're very excited. I'm not going to give it away, but we did speak with someone about um specifically the question was, what mistakes do people who are in the true crime field make? And she said exactly what you just said. She said, people in the true crime field get a little bit of information and they make this big, you know, decision where they start saying all these things and they're placing blame and judging people. And it's really interesting that you're saying, you know, exactly the same thing and it's good perspective for us. And we try to be really careful about that. And we talk a lot. People experience grief in different ways, but then I go, oh, but if I if if Michael was missing, I would want to talk to everybody, but then I have to stop myself and say that's what I think I would do. Number one, I'm not in that position. So I think I might do that. And number two, I'm not that person. So it's a good perspective for us to um kind of remember and step back. And not everybody will want to participate in this.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

No, they won't. And hopefully, you will never have to confront the reality of that version of yourself. It it is pretty much everybody's worst nightmare to find out that their spouse or their parent or their child or their sibling or whatever has been abducted or has been murdered. Um it's it's the worst nightmare because it's it's something that we we don't think about. Like we're we're here. You the three of us are here.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

Several of the people that we will talk to um after we're done interviewing them, they'll message me or Michael and be like, Did I do okay? Did I sound okay? Uh and I know that's just nerves and anxiety, but we've had a couple of um people very close to our case who have said, Did I sound like I cared? Did I sound apathetic? Did I sound like it didn't matter to me? Or did I, was I not emotional enough? And I find that really interesting. And I don't know if that's because maybe they're reflecting or they're getting feedback from people. And I kind of like what you just said. Typically, this is another way of like, am I supporting them in the way that I need to be? Because I will say, um, do you think you did the right thing for whatever you're yes, I think I did great. I said then what other people say doesn't really matter. And can we hold space and our Facebook group is very moderated by me and we don't do the things that you're talking about. And I again, I'm gonna put myself in that place where I don't know that I would be concerned about what other people thought about what I said about my loved one, but I have to be sensitive because to some people, like that matters, and that's how their experience is, but they sometimes have a perception that their experience isn't emotional enough or people think they don't care. It's it's a very odd phenomenon.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

If it without sounding too much like a jerk, if I cared that much about what so many other people thought of me, I would it would have been driving me into a mental institution years ago. Yeah, that's what I try to do. Yeah. Yeah. Zero fucks to give. If you don't like me, yeah. If you don't like me, that's cool. You don't have to like me. I'm not getting paid by the number of likes I have. I'm not getting paid for people who are, you know, want to be my best friend or people that think I'm the biggest jerk in existence. I I don't think I'm the biggest jerk, um, but I'm not worried about what I'm worried about when it comes to the podcast is providing is providing a platform where people who have a story to tell feel like they can tell it, where they can they where they're heard and where they are seen and where they are validated.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 55:33

Because so many people don't talk because they think that others think that their story doesn't matter. And again, some people it if people don't want to hear about stories that have nothing to do with them, they won't listen to the podcast. That's okay. That I respect that. That it's you're perfectly allowed to make that decision. Some people want to listen to these things because they're dealing with things on their own too, and they don't know how to deal with them. And sometimes listening to others and how they processed their own feelings and their own grief, sometimes it helps. Sometimes it helps to know that you're not excuse me, sometimes it helps to know that you're not alone in what you're experiencing. And so, of course, to go back to missing persons, yeah. Sometimes missing persons will kind of the families of missing persons will band together because they have that in common. But also, again, like I don't know. I just again, as I said before, like if if I had a family member that was missing, sure, I would want to do everything I could to bring them home.

SPEAKER_03 56:38

Tell us, um, tell our listeners how to how do they find you?

SPEAKER_00 56:40

Well, if you live in Tampa, I mean, I'm kind of a big guy, so if you're missing me, you're just not looking hard enough. Uh but otherwise, if you would like to find me, you can um the podcast, as we've already said, is called Grief is not a dirty word. It is available on all major platforms. It's on uh Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, Pandora. Probably, I think about a dozen or so more. Um it it's everywhere. You can listen to each episode at grief is not a dirty word.com. Uh, you can follow my social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and um LinkedIn. I know that LinkedIn isn't really considered a social media, it's a more of a professional gathering, but I am on LinkedIn as well. Um, you can either look me up by name or by the podcast. Um I do love having conversations with new people the same way that the three of us started our conversation at Podfest. Um, I was I I I do need to say how honored and touched I was that you guys came up to me after the conversation. Um Podfest was the first time for me ever of doing any kind of public speaking. That that was a Saturday when we had talked because I know it was the day that I was leaving. Um, the Thursday I had done a five-minute solo speech. That was my first public speaking engagement ever. Friday, I did uh uh a panel discussion on uh domestic violence, and then Saturday I did that one with uncomfortable topics and grief and trauma. Um so those three days definitely kind of changed my life in the sense of you know being um able to talk to people who actually are semi-interested in hearing something that I have to say, and the fact that you guys and everybody else on Saturday and on Friday and on Thursday that came up to me afterwards, I mean it was it was entirely new to me. And it was, I don't know, it was almost like a little bit embarrassed because I didn't know how to deal with it because I had never experienced it, never thought of myself as you know being a public speaker, but I was truly touched by your desire to talk to me and your willingness to stick around. Uh, I know it was it was a while before we even got to start talking because there were so many people, but then we were talking for like an hour afterwards, and I remember thinking the entire way home back from Orlando back to Tampa um just how much I really enjoyed all of the conversations I got to have over the week, but specifically ours, um, you know, the three of us. And I I can't thank you guys enough for investing your time in listening to me and of course everybody else who was on the panel, um, but then wanting to talk about this, wanting to talk to about having me on your podcast. I'm I love having interviews with other podcasts. I'm always excited and honored to be able to do this. And I just I need to thank you guys for having this platform, for having this show, for doing the work that you're doing, um, for helping families of missing persons, and for all the work that you've done, that you continue to do, and for allowing me to uh play a small part in the success of your show.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

Well, we definitely appreciated meeting you. And so I mean, you were a standout for us, and so I'm really glad you took the time to sit down with us and we came up with the idea for the show that we could share with our listeners. And it and it checked a it checked a few boxes um because again, we talk about grief quite a bit on the show, but we never really address it, you know, directly. We just kind of understand that we're in it and we try to be as empathetic as possible and we listen. And, you know, what we found is you know, you said it earlier, because I've I've actually funny enough, I've quoted it already, where it talks about people die twice. Um, I I got that from you. Um, and it's something that we think about, and you know, the reason we think this podcast has become popular and why we're getting so much positive feedback is because we're providing the platform for people to say those names and to continue to say those names. And so as a result, as long as we're we're able and willing, we will continue to do so.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:03

And I think that's incredible that you're doing this. This work is so desperately needed because there are families out there who are want nothing more than their person or persons to come back home. Um even if it's not in the way that they truly want them to come back home.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:28

You've been listening to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. Our purpose is to honor victims by sharing their stories through the voices of friends, family, and those whose lives were forever changed. If today's episode resonated with you, we encourage you to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast so these important stories continue to be heard. Together, we can preserve their memories and ensure their voices are never forgotten. If you have ideas for cases we should cover or questions about what you heard, you can connect with us through our Facebook group, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast, on X at Tragedy Podcast, by email at TragedyAtrue Crime Podcast at gmail.com, or by visiting our website www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.