Nate’s Notes 31: Ivan Maisel | Grief Is Love

I’m grateful to Ivan for sharing such difficult, profound lessons: 

First, when we lose someone, we can’t stay where they are. Our life must go on. What we have to do is pick up the grief, and what we can of our loved ones, and take it with us. And it may feel like pushing a boulder up a hill forever. But if we don’t keep moving forward, we lose again. 

Second, we have to grieve. If we don’t control how grief comes out of our system, it will control us. All the while though, we need to not judge others for how they grieve.

Third, grief is love. Grief is the form love takes after we lose someone, and when we’re feeling terrible for losing loved ones, it’s because we loved them so much.

Fourth, when we lose a loved one, we have a finite pool of memories of them. What a gift it is when someone can provide us a new memory of them.

And finally, there’s no shame in being sick. When it comes to mental health and mental illness we need to focus on the second word. It’s a health issue or illness, and the quicker we can look at it as a disease the quicker we can get rid of the stigma, and devote resources to fix it.

Thanks again to Ivan Maisel for sharing the most difficult lessons anyone could ever learn in life.

Ivan Maisel Bio:

Ivan Maisel has covered college football for nearly four decades at ESPN, Sports Illustrated, the Dallas Morning News, Newsday and currently at On3.com.

He has been honored eight times for Best Story by the Football Writers Association of America, and twice by The Associated Press Sports Editors, which in 2019 named him one of the 10 best sports columnists. 

When I think of Ivan Maisel, I think of the word “insight.” He has an incredible ability to provide accurate, and deep intuitive understanding. And in this episode Ivan shared lessons learned from the most tragic event of his life. 

I hope you enjoyed learning from Ivan Maisel, because I certainly did.