“Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is halved sorrow.” Swedish proverb

A few years ago, Anderson Cooper interviewed Stephen Colbert on Cooper’s podcast All There is with Anderson Cooper. Their conversation turned to the subject of navigating grief, something that both Cooper and Colbert know about more intimately than they should. Along with many of us, my favorite singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles was listening, and she was truly moved by their open, honest, painful conversation. Bareilles was working through the terrible loss of two of her close friends at the time, and Colbert and Cooper’s conversation inspired her to write Home. She calls the lyrics “pretty much plagiarism from that conversation.” Below is Anderson Cooper’s interview with Bareilles and his first time hearing the song. It’s incredibly emotional, but if you’d like a good, cathartic, ugly cry, give the interview a listen. It’s genuinely beautiful, and it made me love them both even more than I did before, if that is possible.

“I am one day older than my father was
Than he ever got to be
I was 10 years old when I grew up
Cause he died at 53
I stare at across the great divide
And my mother who was left
Dinner tables stretched oceans wide
Like a hollow in a chest.

“I never asked hard questions
I thought they cause more pain
I hadn’t yet learned life’s holy lesson
That what is broken cannot heal until it’s known
And loved by name”

Home by Sara Bareilles

I’ve posted the Bareilles interview first below, and in case you missed the Colbert conversation, that follows it.

Wishing everyone experiencing grief a good cry and gentler days. xo