[00:00:00] Regina Koepp: I am so excited to welcome you today to the psychology of aging podcast. We have an exciting guest on with us, Steven Petrow. He is an author and was on our podcast before talking about things. I won't stupid things. I won't do when I get old. It's an anti ageist perspective about aging. And so I'll link to that previous interview in the show notes, but let me tell you a little bit about Steven Petrow.

I'm going to read it from his book jacket because today we're going to be talking about the joy you make, which is his new book. Steven Petrow is an award winning journalist and author who's best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on aging, health, and civility.

He's a regular contributor to NPR and other news outlets, and his TED Talk, Three Ways to Practice Civility, has generated nearly 2 million views. Steven is the author of six books, including the best selling Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old. He's a volunteer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for two decades and has endowed an annual fellowship to support LGBT writers at the Virginia Center for Arts.

He currently resides in North Carolina. And as you might discover in his book, does an annual pilgrimage to Stinson Beach, which is near where I lived for a very long time. Let's dive into my interview with Steven Petrow

Steven, I'm so delighted to have you back and to say your name because in your book, you talk about how important it is for people to remember not only a name, but a pronunciation of a name and how special it is. And so Steven, I'm delighted to have you back.

[00:01:43] Steven Petrow: Regina, Dr. Regina, I'm very happy to be back with you. We had such a good, fun time last time. We did, and I'm confident we're going to have a fun time this time too.

[00:01:54] Regina Koepp: You wrote a book about joy, and you wrote a book about joy during a very difficult time in your life. You in the introduction of your book, you talk about your sister having cancer, and we were emerging from the COVID 19 pandemic.

Can you set the stage for us? It's why a book on joy, and during one of the most challenging times in your life.

[00:02:22] Steven Petrow: So there's a personal story, and then there's a somewhat of a professional meshing there. So 2017 was like my really shitty year. My mom died in January, my dad then in April, and my husband and I separated in January.

literally at the midpoint of those two those two other losses. And then later that year, my sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And I'm generally a resilient person, but that wound up being like a lot and a lot to a lot for me to carry. And I found myself floundering and in despair and, I don't know if I was you know, hitting bottom, but I realized I needed.

I needed some more light. I needed some more laughter, some more love. I wasn't really sure what that was. And I started like this little project on my Facebook page of taking photographs and then tagging them. They were they started off being pretty photographs, like sunrises and moonrises.

And I would tag them joyful, beauty is everywhere and gratitude. And then over the next couple of months. Various friends and then followers and strangers started posting their own photographs with the same tags, same hashtags. And we started to build this community of creating joy, sharing it and then having that sort of ricochet back and forth.

And that was like my first like little step on my roadmap to joy because I got so much then out of taking these photographs and sharing them and then, getting the love back. And so that kind of set me off on this search of my own to to find more joy in my life. And yeah.

And I did a column for the Washington Post where I write, and that was like in the middle of the pandemic and, I think we're up to 750, 000 deaths at that time and there's a lot of polarization and all these anxieties. And so that was called, How to Find Joy in Difficult Times.

That definitely struck a nerve with readers because people seemed very hungry for that. As we've seen, in this political season, people are very hungry for joy. But an unintended consequence of that was that my literary agent got a phone call, I think about a month later, From a woman named Maria Shriver who's not just any woman, and she is the publisher of her own imprint at Penguin Random House, it's called The Open Field.

And she asked Richard Pine, would you think Steven would be interested in writing a book about joy and how to find joy? And When Richard asked me that, I was like I don't know. I'm not sure. But then I thought about it for a couple of days and I thought that will help me continue this roadmap.

And I think I do have some things to say, and I knew I had some things to learn and both turned out to be true. And so Maria bought the book. That was about two, two and a half years ago. And now it's here. And I'm like, oh my God.

[00:05:18] Regina Koepp: And your style of writing, just for people who haven't had the privilege of reading your work yet, Yet is it's so great because it's very personal, but there's a message and you share these vignettes of your life, which I love because I love the human experience and I love honesty about the human experience.

And the way that your book is structured, it's every chapter has its own sort of lesson in joy. Would you say it is that an accurate portrayal? Yes, that is. Tell me,

[00:05:54] Steven Petrow: just to look at the chat, my chapter titles are always very illustrative. It starts off with the joy of gratitude and authenticity, the joy of cooking the joy of blue, which is about water and the joy of writing by hand and the joy of being single and the joy of aging joy of sex.

So They're each little sort of joy vignettes and some strategies some strategies how to take steps in that direction, but also personal recollections of things I did. Some of them work, some of them didn't work.

[00:06:24] Regina Koepp: Yes, one of my favorites. I have so many favorites in your book is your pecan pie competition it actually was just can you talk a little bit about that?

And then also the Christmas miracle and how, because what I love about this book is that you started off with saying, I was You weren't a protest to joy, but it didn't come naturally.

[00:06:45] Steven Petrow: I'm a curmudgeon by nature, and, some of my friends had started calling me Eeyore long before I hit, midlife.

So it was my character. But not entirely. But that, the pecan pie story, it's it's a big one in my family. I had started making a pie 20, 30 years ago and perfecting it. And everyone knew that Steven brought the pie on the holidays. And then when I got married to my husband, that family knew and I was very much, I pretty much owned that.

And a competitor came into the family and in law who did not know the rules. And she brought her pie. And when she came to Thanksgiving, she told the story of her pie. Previously, I just relied on the merits of mine. And she told like this yarn of a story. She was from the South and she had gone to her grandmother's pecan farm and she was not eight and a half months pregnant.

She was on a ladder and she was gathering this pecans and then she made this pie. And so my whole family voted for her pie because it had such a great story. It also was a delicious pie, I will say. So that kind of taught me though, that. The stories are much more important than anything else and that, that whole, the whole decades of making pies has been how that pie is the pie that binds us rather than divides us.

And we have, we have, Sad stories that are attached to the holidays and we have happy ones, but the pie has been a constant and so I learned an important lesson in that competition with darn Megan, who now, that was a long time ago. That child is now beautiful and adult and probably making pies that would compete with me too.

You're and what you also offered just as you were describing earlier is your own pecan pie recipe in the chapter. And so if y'all want to make your own pie or Steven's pie for your holiday dinners, you might just win. Yes. The joy of winning. Joy of winning.

The joy of play is. And and I tell there the story of Coming back to tennis after I'd last played tennis as a teenager where I had been like moderately good and then when I started again at the very end of the pandemic, I sucked, but that's where I learned the lesson. It's not the joy of winning.

It's the joy of playing. It's the joy of fun. It's the joy of meeting new friends and embracing the suck as part of the experience. And that was a big I had been a very competitive person and I still am in certain ways, but. I've allowed myself to go into a different mindset, and part of this whole book is about how can we shift our mindsets a little bit to find more joy here or there.

[00:09:22] Regina Koepp: Since you're talking about a perspective shift, changing our mindset, changing our perspective, what was the biggest takeaway for you in writing this book?

What did you learn about yourself related to joy or another self discovery and what did you learn about others?

[00:09:40] Steven Petrow: Great question. So there are a couple of things I had felt, in that period of time that we started talking about that I didn't have any joy in my life.

And as I came to understand. The different ways that joy is that joy can manifest. I learned a lot, because most of us think, joy is like the 4th of July celebration, or, this ecstasy, however, we experienced that, that is definitely one joy. That's called ecstatic joy. But they're quieter ones.

They're It's anticipatory joy, looking forward to the future of this joy that we have in our memories spiritual joy, I came to see there was a much broader understanding of the ways that we can experience it, and then I say Oh, actually some of that is happening, and I don't have to be on this like super high to understand joy.

So that, that was one, one big lesson. And then also understanding the difference between happiness and joy. And I, like many, also had conflated the two. Same thing. Joy's a shorter word. But the more I came to both research with experts and to talk with real life people. Happiness is the result of something else.

You get a job promotion. You're going to be happy. You're on vacation at some place you want to go. You're going to be happy. It's about you and maybe the people who are right there with you. Joy is much more a state of mind. It's driven as an internal state rather than reacting to something.

So it's much more a state of being and much less ephemeral. And I talk about some examples in the book that happiness is making, happiness is eating a brownie. Joy is, baking a pan of brownies and sharing them. And so that gets to the nature of we and you and me, which is a really fundamental part of joy.

And the whole notion of community and connection is one of the essential pillars of joy.

[00:11:39] Regina Koepp: Yeah. And it, it reminds me back to where you started of the hashtag with your friends, you were in despair and just finding little many moments of joy in your life and it caught on and friends and followers.

[00:11:55] Steven Petrow: Exactly. And, we live in a time where we feel alone, where we feel the polarization is in our families, it's in our communities, we don't feel seen, we don't feel heard. You started off, by introducing me by my correct name and, correct, pronunciation, but, that, That whole chapter is about, about, how I have been miscalled, so often and how that can make you feel not seen or invisible so that, to remember someone's name and to call them that by that you are saying, I see you, I hear you, you matter to me and something, we're all lying for and those that the sense, the set of feelings that come along with that are also part of what, what gives us joy -to be seen.

[00:12:41] Regina Koepp: Yeah, and understood. Yeah. And so what have you discovered about others? What have you seen in others in your quest for understanding joy?

[00:12:50] Steven Petrow: I've seen some of the same preconditions that that I exhibit preconditions, something medical. But I've also seen that, many of us think in some ways we don't deserve joy.

And that's for all kinds of reasons, some people have challenging circumstances in their own lives, and how can I feel any modicum of joy when someone is ill or someone is unemployed? And and then in a larger societal sense, and I understand that, but one of the, one of the goals of the book is also to explain how joy is really considered the only positive emotion that can share the stage.

You can feel joyful and you can feel lost at the same time. And I talk at the end of the book about my sister who, my sister Julie, who did die last year. And while that was a tremendous loss for our family, the time that she was ill, which was almost six years, brought our family so much closer together.

It allowed us to shed skins. It allowed us to find sort of our essence within the family and to be our authentic selves. And that again is about being seen and being heard and especially to be there for Julie. And there were these, there was this whole undercurrent that became a current of joy at the same time we were losing her.

When you think about being happy. You can be happy, but it's really hard to imagine, suffering from grief at the same time. So that's a beauty of joy. And I realized that many did really not understand that. And that's where I relied on experts at first to explain much of this to me.

And then, then did my own reporting and my own self analysis, so to speak. And application. You applied it to your life. Yes, I have been the guinea pig for this book. And I'll just tell you an anecdote that happened the other day, I talk about vulnerability as a way to take off our armor and and to, to become more real. And I was scheduled to do another interview last week and I was having a lot of anxiety and I'm, anxiety is not unfamiliar to me, but I was getting hit by waves of it and I didn't feel that I was up to do that interview.

So I thought I was emailing the producer. Somehow I emailed 10 people who were on a thread saying that I was really having really being challenged by my mental health. And and my first response when I saw that was, oh my God, I was embarrassed. I felt, I fight the stigma of talking about it, but I felt the stigma still.

And but then something happened. Almost half of those people responded to me saying either, what can I do for you? How are you feeling? Or sharing their own stories or their own family members of folks who have those kinds of challenges. So then I'm feeling much closer to this whole set of people that my openness, my vulnerability had actually turned out to be.

Have positive impact and one that I probably wouldn't have chosen because it would have seemed too risky. There I was and there they were. And now I'm telling you.

[00:16:07] Regina Koepp: And I'm honored that you are. I feel grateful. And you're in good company with mental health concerns. And I was thinking about my family.

I grew up in a very complicated family life. I have four brothers. We had different dads. Most of us didn't know our dads. We were unhoused for a long time. Mental illness, substance use disorders. And I will tell you, my brothers are some of the funniest, most joyful people, in the midst of chaos and trauma.

That like somehow there's this I think it's part of the spirit of survival in some ways and we see that in other communities to that experience oppression, and just these sell like celebrating life and celebrating and joyful ways despite oppression or. Marginalization or minoritization. And you talk about it in your book too.

That it's part, and you said it here earlier that it's part of resilience, that authenticity, joy has a role in resilience. And can you. I don't know. I'm just going off the cuff here. So I'm putting you on the spot. What are your thoughts about that?

[00:17:22] Steven Petrow: I did a lot of reading about what's called Black joy also.

That didn't fit into my own personal narrative. But but it does speak to very much to what we're talking about. And that the Black community, which has faced, Significant amounts of overt and covert discrimination and oppression and so on, has managed to create institutions and rituals and structures that strengthen them, that hold them, that create this resilience that All of that joy, manifests from and I think it's really a perfect example of what we're talking about.

Other communities have done that as well, like within the queer community, which I'm part of gay pride. LGBTQ pride is really was initially a celebration of who we are back in the 60s, as well as a political statement. And that's why there's often been a party or a party aspect to it, because. We were so demonized, and even by the mental health profession before the mid 1970s as, true deviants, but we found, through our institutions, This resilience and this joy.

I think for anybody who is feeling downtrodden, think about traditions that your family has that, that speak to you and how you can build on them and what they mean to you. And especially how you can share them with those you love.

[00:18:45] Regina Koepp: Yeah, as points of connection. I think especially if you're living in hardship sometimes people and families connect over conflict and you're offering an alternative, there might be a connection through joy or shared tradition or something that could be a healthier connection point.

[00:19:03] Steven Petrow: It was like within your family, I obviously, I don't know any of the dynamics beyond what you said, but something positive happened with you and your brothers that, has allowed for this outcome, rather than a different outcome that would have been, much more challenging, probably much sadder.

[00:19:20] Regina Koepp: Yes. And I think just like in your experience and just the human experience, it's both there's tragedy and I love what your book also on the cover says, find the silver linings, even on your darkest day or darkest days. And I think that's it. It's it. There is darkness and there's light and look for the light.

[00:19:40] Steven Petrow: And we can't really appreciate the light unless we acknowledge the darkness, somebody once asked me, wouldn't you want it to be like sunny every day? No, too much. How could I appreciate it? I'm not a, I'm not a Pollyanna by any stretch, but too much. We do need to have some shade.

[00:20:04] Regina Koepp: Yes, I, this is my first this has been, I had, I've had two winters in my whole life because we moved to Vermont, and I grew up in Southern California where there was no darkness, there was no gray time and I will tell you, after my first winter and welcoming spring, and it was a marvel to me that there could be, it could be gray snow everywhere and then a week later things could be flourishing, like growing and popping and like how does this happen that out of all of this frozenness comes life?

Like it was so thrilling to me in a way I'd never experienced.

[00:20:42] Steven Petrow: That's the magic of the universe and it happens every year, almost like clockwork and I know and, in part, we often don't see those things. I think the fact that you were a new resident in that area, that's wow, most of us are where we've lived for a long time, we stopped seeing.

And that can be, we stop seeing sort of the external things and we stop seeing the things within ourselves too. It's important to take a fresh look and there is a chapter in the book called The Joy of Perspective. And it's written by Sarah Porwal. It's a poem within it that's written by Sarah Porwal.

And she is a cancer survivor now, breast cancer. And this poem, if you read it from start to finish to finish, it is a very dreary scenario. If you read it from the last line back, same language, same words, it's a joyful scenario. And so that, it really speaks to perspective, how we can change it.

First is to become aware of it and then it's to do a mind shift, gradual mind shift. But and I'm really glad that Sarah shared that with me.

[00:21:51] Regina Koepp: It was so good. I and that was in your time as, and you still volunteer at Sloan Kettering, right? And that was through, you learned about Sarah through your volunteer work at Sloan Kettering, is that right?

[00:22:04] Steven Petrow: Yeah, I'm in a program where it's called Visible Ink, and professional writers are matched with patients, generally, and we let them write whatever they want, and then we coach, edit whatever is needed, and she was she actually wasn't one of the one of the patients that I was working with Her poem got performed at the annual ceremony that they do, which is how I first came upon it.

So it was on a stage with a scrim and it was really, it was very dramatic, but. It does take me to remember that volunteering, this sort of giving of oneself to others, it gives us a lot back as well. We sometimes don't recognize that immediately and people would often say to me, because I'm actually a cancer survivor, which is how I first got involved with Sloan Kettering, as a patient and then as a volunteer now for Decades.

That how can you go into that hospital? How can you be talking about cancer and those relationships have really helped me grow. And it's also a time when I feel like I have helped others and there's. There's joy that, there's joy that comes from that and joy from sitting with someone in a quiet space and just being present.

And sometimes that has meant not even speaking. You're just there because it's hard for us to be present. We have so many things that are going on. We're picking up our phones. Everybody knows this. But it's a sacred place when I'm in the hospital like that.

[00:23:34] Regina Koepp: Yeah, there's a reverence for sure. And it's there is some biological research actually that shows the benefits of giving and I think you even point to this in your book, don't you? I think you do and you talk about and research talks about and then I think you talk about the the Biological benefits of service and giving but it's good for our hearts. It's good for our health to Be of service

[00:24:00] Steven Petrow: and there's the release of the sort of the happy making hormones that can take place as well through connection. It's interesting in the book. I talked to experts, I use my own experience, but there's a lot of research studies that, that, that are here too.

It's not woo. And that's a word that I'm still having my own static with, but it does push us out of our, a little bit out of our comfort zone in places, but that, yeah, I think that's fine because this is meant to show a lot of different ways that people might. Find more joy in their lives or make more joy and not every lesson is applicable to everybody that doesn't work that way.

[00:24:37] Regina Koepp: You also have a chapter on the joy of imperfection, and you think about your crooked nose, which I didn't even recognize until I read it in the book, and which is beautiful and perfect, and mismatched lamps, and and and at the end, an off center belly button, and at your for This sort of joy of imperfection.

Thanks for telling everybody. You're welcome. I'm just quoting you Oh, that would be a fun, reminded me, you're talking about shifting perspective and mindset and then here you're talking about shifting What our view is of perfection and imperfection and it reminded me of the Nathaniel Hawthorne birthmark story.

Do you remember that story remind me of that. I'm not. It's not jumping to mind. Oh so yeah it was a story about. A new couple and the woman was gorgeous apparently and she had a birthmark, a red birthmark of a little shape of a little hand on her face and he was this biochemist or something and he says, Oh, everybody says you're so beautiful and I love you so much and you're so beautiful but let me just remove this birthmark with you and she's but don't you think it will change me and make me different and Don't you think it could cause more harm than good?

And he says no, it'll make you more beautiful. And so he develops this concoction, she drinks it and she slowly fades away. So what happens is that the birthmark fades and they're excited about it. And and then it starts to, Take away her full essence of being, and she begins to fade out, just like the birthmark faded out.

And I love seeing, and I don't even see your crooked nose on your face, but I love your nose. I'm sure I would like your mismatched lamps. And and I don't need to see your crooked belly button to probably like that too. But I'm curious about your take on that about. It being the essence of who we are.

[00:26:39] Steven Petrow: Yeah, and it took me some time to come to this perspective. And the reason I have an off center belly button and also I have a very big scar because I had cancer surgery when I was 26 and At the time, I was I was unmarried and I was very self conscious about my body and, the scar was new.

Very uncomfortable, and it seemed like this glaring imperfection that was defining me. Over time, I remember when I would go to bed with someone new, I'd turn down the lights right in their shirt. The mirror was not my friend. Over time. I came to understand those imperfections as almost as badges of honor or evidence that I had survived something, which they were.

And so my perspective shifted and and I began to leave the lights on and, to actually be naked. So that, that was really important in my head. And I, When I was 13, my nose took a little bit of a tilt to, to the left, just as my mother's had at that age.

And I wrote an essay in the New York Times, it's probably about 10 years ago now, that was talking about some of the vanity issues men have getting older. And in the Times, I mentioned the nose, but I hadn't done anything about it. And I was on the fence. That essay got reprinted in the Daily Mirror in the UK.

Yeah. And they took my like headshot and they blew it up so that my nose was like a poster. And at that, with that focus, it looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was like falling off. And then there were so many comments, so many horrible comments. That actually, that brought the resilience out of me.

And it was really at that time that I said, forget it. This is my nose. It was probably around the same time that Sarah Jessica Parker had. Her her little mole removed, which, many people, including myself, thought that was a defining and beautiful aspect of her face, but then it disappeared, so I shifted the other way. Obviously she should do and did whatever she wanted, but Sure. I thought there was a lesson in all of that to me and acceptance, and it's a lot of joy and acceptance and not seeking something else

[00:28:49] Regina Koepp: and freedom.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had a similar like I'm very vain. That's because you're so perfect. And then I had this expression that I would say like perfection is so limiting. And then I had kids and I didn't like the, what it did to my, the shift that it made in my body. Actually the kids weren't the problem.

It was like, I had kids in my forties and then menopause, perimenopause right after that was shifting things. And I was like, and now I'm trying to love. My body and the changes that come with life and age. I love, I just love the joy of imperfection and also of shifting perspective because it's.

It's so liberating, like we were just talking about. So at the end of your book, and can we switch to talk about Julie? Oh, let me just back up actually to say one of my favorite moments of your book is when you came out to Julie and she laughed. Can you tell that story? Because in my mind, Julie is seared in my mind as that stage of life with the big smile on her face, making a joke.

Will you share that story?

[00:29:58] Steven Petrow: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so in my, I think I was about 20 and I was slowly coming out and Sigily was five years younger than me, which meant she was 15 or 16. And I decided I was going to tell her that actually I had a photograph of a keep of it.

So this is the two of us the year before she died. We look like twins, I think. So I told her, I said, and I stammered and I, I was like, And then she just started laughing hysterically, and I thought that was premature. She can't handle this. And and then she says I have a girlfriend.

I'm a lesbian. And I'm like, I didn't, I had not met a lesbian at that point. And you said that to her, right? I was shocked. And so that was part, that was like the formation, the real close formation of a bond that lasted, lasted through many chapters, for many decades.

And it's interesting, their words for when a spouse dies, the survivor is a widow or a widower. There, there is no word for the surviving, sibling, and, when we don't have words for something, it's almost like it doesn't exist that's something I'm thinking about for the future.

[00:31:06] Regina Koepp: What word would you give it?

[00:31:08] Steven Petrow: I don't know but just to talk about the challenge of how do you acknowledge and see something if we don't have the words for it?

[00:31:14] Regina Koepp: Yeah, I think a widow or widower and then there's even an orphan when you lose your parents, right? There's a word for that.

And even adults or older adults who lose their parents will describe feeling orphaned, like an adult orphan. And then yeah, so what is the word for a sibling?

[00:31:33] Steven Petrow: Yeah, I'm going to do some research. I think other languages or cultures might have it. And that might be the start. But it just speaks to Another interest of mine, which is the importance of language and how we use language to mark things that matter in our world.

[00:31:49] Regina Koepp: And the importance of roles, like in the bond, it's just an honoring of the bond. And somehow the sibling bond isn't honored in English in the same way.

[00:32:00] Steven Petrow: And I actually have posted a good bit about Julie both before she died because she wanted me to, and this can, we can use this to move in because she had chosen to die by medical aid in dying.

She lived in New Jersey with her wife and medical aid in dying is also known as death with dignity. And she suffering and God went through the various steps to. Be certified or whatever they call it. New Jersey is one of 10 states that allows it. And then on June 30th of 2023 with our whole family present she left us and one of the directives my younger sister gave me was to continue to talk about Her choice and the fact that choice was so important to her and that choice should be made available to more people. So I have been fulfilling that directive from Julie since she passed.

[00:32:53] Regina Koepp: You have a beautiful story in the New York Times. Talking about it. You have an audio essay where you talk and I think her voice is inserted at times and on the day that she dies and it was really almost like she was, she lays herself to rest.

And She's on the phone with an insurer. She's doing such mundane tasks the morning of. She's on the phone with the insurance company.

[00:33:17] Steven Petrow: So she had said the night before, Don't wake me up. I want to sleep in. Fine. And then I hear her up at 6 in the morning, and then soon enough she's on the phone, and she's talking to this insurance agent saying, I'm doing maid at noon.

You have to get back to me by then. And she's also, she's got a little secret project that we didn't find about, find out about until later, but she's writing notes to her girls, her wife and her daughters, including a four page letter on how to decorate and undecorate their Christmas tree.

Because Julie had always been the one in charge and the director, and she was convinced that nobody else in, in her family could do that. And That was really the last thing she did before before she laid herself to rest, so to speak. And then we didn't discover that until the Christmas ornaments were being unpacked six months later.

And it was just this beautiful way that she suddenly was present again for that holiday with her sense of humor and and so on.

[00:34:16] Regina Koepp: She strikes me as a remarkable woman. Just her big smile. And when you came out to her, she came out, she like one upped you. And at Christmas, she's, you're not doing it right.

[00:34:29] Steven Petrow: This is the way to do it. She just It was a sounded like a force. She was. And, early on in the 90s, she and her wife, Maddie had two children and they were at the forefront of that because of the various marriage and domestic partner laws, they had four or five ceremonies. They every opportunity.

They did it again, and then, and all of them, including her daughters, have been advocates for marriage equality before before it was won yeah it's, they're a remarkable family, and I wish I could be part of that family, which is my family.

[00:35:07] Regina Koepp: Yes. Yeah. I wondered if you'd be open to sharing what it was like.

For you as a her brother to learn that this was how she wanted to die through medical aid and dying or death with dignity and was there a process for you to come to terms with it? Were you automatically on board

[00:35:25] Steven Petrow: a really good question? And answer is. Julie knew she had this diagnosis and she knew that most people passed after about five years, certainly between five and 10 years.

So she introduced discussions about death into our family, fairly early on because most of us, Yeah, we don't like that conversation. It's painful because it's about loss. And I I was one of them, I didn't shut anything down, and then it's as things moved along, she started doing more research about about medical aid in dying since it was available in New Jersey.

And she began educating the rest of us. I I remember feeling that it would be just so strange. To know that she was going to choose a day and a time and that's when we were going to lose her. It seems it was so unfamiliar. We don't generally, experience stuff that way. Even though, many families now experience births, through caesareans and they're planned, they're on the calendar, it's the same thing.

So my own, my own views were also clouded by, I didn't want to lose her. And so for me to say, Oh, Okay, Julie. Yes, I support that. It felt initially like I was saying, I'm ready to say goodbye. They're different. I came to realize they were different. And part of that learning came from seeing her suffering and seeing how, the painkillers that they had for her were not sufficient.

And, as soon as I saw, how much Julie was suffering, I There was, I had no question, and the same was true for everyone else in the family. No one should have to suffer like that. Everyone should be able to make a choice, there's nothing that's mandated about this, and you can change your mind at any time.

But, to have that choice over your own body was the message that Julie really wanted wanted for herself and wanted me to talk about. So that when the time came,

We were all, we were all with her, we were all supporting her, we all held her during the period of time from when she swallowed the medication until her heart stopped. And

I talk about this a little bit in the book, how, the whole family in this one room with her at this sacred moment gave us a connection I think that's gonna last forever. We had a good foundation to start off with. And that's a very quiet joy that inhabited that room, but to be able to be present for someone and for each other it's beautiful, and horrible,

[00:37:55] Regina Koepp: that's devastating.

Yeah, as I was reading your book, it started with Julie and it ended with Julie and I, and there were these moments of extroverted joy with Julie, the, she seemed very effervescent and had, she was born with a big smile.

[00:38:12] Steven Petrow: Yes. Yeah, a big toothy smile I just gonna say, three months before she actually died.

It was her birthday and She wanted to have a party. She's gonna be 60 61 and so and we knew you know time was running out So it was very it was, we had these two emotions We had this amazing party and we had this pinata that said Cancer sucks. And, everyone there whacked at it until, we got all of our aggressions out and we had two cakes.

There was the cake for the birthday and the cake for the goodbye. And she said after it was like I had my memorial service while I was still here, which was a real gift to her and the rest of us to be able to speak with such love so openly in her community of friends, our community of friends.

[00:39:01] Regina Koepp: You're really speaking about the duality of life and death and presence and loss and I think your book does that so beautifully in using your own vignettes and your life with her and thank you.

[00:39:14] Steven Petrow: Thank you. It's always, pleasure is not the right word. It's always it's very comforting to talk to you and it's very meaningful the way we've had our conversation.

So thank you.

[00:39:23] Regina Koepp: That means a lot to me. So in our parting, I'm curious what you would say, we were relieving the listener with one, one call to action for joy, for cultivating joy. What would you say?

[00:39:38] Steven Petrow: I think what I would say is you don't need the gratitude journal, but think every night before you go to sleep: what gave you joy that day? One thing, and I'll just say the day my dad died I thought I'm not gonna have anything to write down. I did. You will too. It takes a little focus. So that's the beginning.

[00:40:01] Regina Koepp: And you share that in the book, what you found. So the listener will have to get the book to, to hear what that was.

[00:40:06] Steven Petrow: It's as we're finishing up, it's one o'clock and you are my joyful moment.

[00:40:10] Regina Koepp: Oh, thank you. Thank you. That means a lot to me. Absolutely. That. A little link to everything in the show notes, from your New York Times articles, to the joy you make, to other things you're doing, and our previous interview as well.

[00:40:26] Steven Petrow: Until next time.

[00:40:28] Regina Koepp: Yes. Until next time. Bye bye. Bye.