Grief and The Leftovers 

The Leftovers is my favorite show and I don't see it getting dethroned any time soon. I don't think anything else on TV has ever come closer to eloquently expressing the human condition as The Leftovers has. It's a true gift to the world.

In 2022, a friend cut me out of his life unexpectedly and for a reason I didn’t understand. For a while, the way that I dealt with this was by pretending he was dead. It was too painful for me to think about him choosing to remove me from his life while it continued to go on. A few months ago, a mutual friend mentioned that he and my ex friend had met up for lunch. This launched me back into a small grief spiral because my coping mechanism was shattered - I faced irrefutable evidence that his life was going on. Recently, I went for a run in an area I knew my ex friend frequented, hoping both that I would see him and that I wouldn’t. After the run, I felt sad that I didn’t see him. But I realized I’d spent the run remembering the good times he and I had had in that place, and that was in a way like sharing it again. I think that’s as close to some kind of acceptance as I’ve come yet.

Thank you so much. I can not express, how i feel, but thank you. It's like I can think again.

we need more media that follows the devastation of a friendship breakup. I'm off to relisten to James Blake's Famous Last words to pick at my own fresh wound. You are witnessed, thank you for testifying and bearing your guts like this for us all to face our own.

Thank you for this

This video came out the same day I needed it. I couldn't take about it at the time but its getting better and this video helped more than you know. They dont need me. I need them. Thank you.

you continue to make some of the poignant pieces of work, reflection, and criticism. Thank you, and may things ever progress to where grief is tolerable and healthy distance can be had~

Listened all the way through, appreciate your work.

Philoctetes AND Simone Weil...? I could only be sniped more by this video if I knew more of Carr of Tennyson. But to put aside all these intellectual defence mechanisms, thank you for making this. The least I could do is to listen to you talking about something that is important to you. (Also, it feels like I had a dozen video essayists reference Kübler-Ross, and this is the first time I'm hearing about the 5 Stages being about one's acceptance of their own death - which makes a lot of sense, based on the author's occupation. Anyway, I've been meaning to read that book for a good while, this might just moved it upwards on the priority list.)

Over the past couple years I've been recovering from a long period of interpersonal abuse and the resulting PTSD, and one of the strangest and sometimes hardest things about is the grief I feel for the relationship,a relationship I am so glad to be rid of, with a person I wish had never met, at times hate more than I thought possible, but I still feel so much grief and absent of anything like love or longing, it's just a pain that sits with me. While the discussion of grief in this video is very different from my experience, I think, but something about it touched that wound in me and made me feel a little more understood. beautiful work. thanks.

Thank you and I'm sorry that you have to carry so much all at once. I lost my partner this year suddenly and was around to see it happen. I think a lot about the potential that was lost and how we both put so much on hold the last few years because of the pandemic and for personal growth; so much was starting to open up for her the last year alone, like the world waking up for the spring after a seemingly years long winter. Grief is so difficult to navigate and watch and yet I keep finding myself drawn to seeing the ways other people live with it, if only because it's a confirmation for both parties that they aren't navigating that space alone. You have my condolences and my best wishes. Thank you for this video.

You seem so courageous. Thank you for this. Going through the worst year also. I share your preference for the TEAR plan. Kiss

I keep trying (and failing) to get into The Leftovers, mostly because I find it so brutal. This is an excellent overview of the show, and of our approaches to grief.

This video made me start a Leftovers rewatch, and oh boy does this show hit different in Covid Season 4. I keep coming back to my fundamental lesson from this show: there's no meaning to this, it just hurts.

Thank you. All of us need miracles; there are no miracles; we need miracles precisely because there are no miracles. It feels true. Sinilar to how we need forgiveness because it cannot be given, I *feel*. The Leftovers might be the most excruciatingly painful and human thing I've ever watched. Brings to mind Nip/Tuck, which I watched as a teenager, and back then I had not seen ANYTHING like that before, and it was a gift to be reflected in that piece of media, to see my own pain and anger and misery and pettyness in the actions of th characters of that show. I do remember soneone saying that they thought the series seemed dark just BECAUSE, or to be sensational, and in the last seasons MAYBE, but ad a blanket statement? Made me feel more alone, but I did feel thwt the show was true, and through that, *I* became more real.

The Leftovers is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I don't think I'll ever bring myself to rewatch it. Videos like this are as close as I'm gonna get. Great look at the series and what makes it so special

The new year has barely begun and you bring us this beautiful gift. Thank you for it. Listened through it all and will read the book to get even more context. Also loved that you quoted Caitlin Doughty, her books have helped me process so much. You are both a treasure.