10% Happier with Dan Harris

Jennifer Senior On: Grief, Happiness, Friendship Breakups, and Why We Feel Younger Than Our Actual Age

Apr 5, 2023

Jennifer Senior, a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer at The Atlantic, sheds light on the human experience, tackling profound topics such as grief and friendship breakups. She shares her insights from her moving piece on Bobby McIlvaine, exploring the diverse ways people cope with loss. Jennifer also discusses the intriguing gap between how old we feel versus our actual age, along with reflections on parenting and the complexity of relationships. Her storytelling emphasizes resilience, emotional depth, and the nuances of human connections.

01:04:08

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Episode guests

Jennifer Senior

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Quick takeaways

Grief manifests uniquely in individuals, showcasing diverse coping mechanisms and paths of mourning.

Exploring the spiritual dimension of grief highlights the search for meaning in tragedy and the complexities of coping with profound loss.

The tragic story of Philip Brickman emphasizes the intricate relationship between mental health, success, and external circumstances in the pursuit of happiness.

Deep dives

Exploring Varied Forms of Grief

Jennifer Senior dives into the exploration of grief, focusing on the diverse ways people experience loss and mourn. Through the lens of Jennifer's work, the podcast discusses specific examples like Bobby McElvane's story and his family's distinct paths of coping after his death on September 11th. The narrative sheds light on how grief impacts individuals uniquely, showcasing different approaches to mourning, from embracing conspiracy theories to avoiding discussions about the loss entirely.

Intro

4min

Exploring Personal Loss and the Art of Storytelling

2min

A Remarkable Journey of Self-Invention

2min

Navigating Grief: A Family's Journey

18min

Exploring Grief: Parent Perspectives and Theories of Loss

2min

Navigating Grief and Meaning

21min

Perceptions of Age and Friendship

16min

Reflections on Grief and Creativity: A Book Launch Conversation

3min

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It’s likely uncontroversial to assert that Jennifer Senior is one of our finest living journalists. She’s currently a staff writer at The Atlantic and before that she spent many years at the New York Times and New York magazine. Jennifer’s written on a vast array of topics, but she has a special knack for writing articles about the human condition that go massively, massively, viral. One such hit was a lengthy and extremely moving piece for The Atlantic that won a Pulitzer Prize. It was about a young man who died on 9/11, and the wildly varying ways in which his loved ones experienced grief. That article, called “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind,” has now been turned into a book called, On Grief: Love, Loss, Memory.

In this interview, we spend a lot of time talking about this truly fascinating yarn, but we also talk about her other articles: one about an eminent happiness researcher who died by suicide, another about why friendships often break up, and a truly delightful recent piece about the puzzling gap between how old we are and how old we think we are. Jennifer has also written a book about parenting, called All Joy and No Fun which we also reference a few times throughout.

In this episode we talk about:

Jennifer’s perspective on the Bobby McIlvaine story
Lesser known theories of grieving from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The work involved in finding meaning in loss
Why – from an evolutionary standpoint – we hurt so badly when we lose someone we love
Commitment and sacrifice
The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
The power and perils of friendship
Why Jennifer has chosen to focus so much of her writing on relationships

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jennifer-senior-583