[Music]
how have you coped with feeling
cheated i lost my child but you lost
your childhood
your mother she's gonna always be with
you i'm pretty sure she's sitting right
next to you now
brad i think it's destiny that you and i
are talking to each other
[Music]
i'm nina nina like nina simone
yeah i'm actually my father navy after
nina simone he was like one of her
biggest fans
you're you're named after true legend
awesome
no wonder we're joined together
i um had two daughters
um i'm sorry i will get emotional
probably
throughout this and i just will say i'm
sorry
kelly um died by suicide in 2018
she really struggled with depression
anxiety um and
one of the things that that i feel like
she did
for others was she always took
other people's grief and pain made it
her own
and tried to help other people she was
in the midst of trying different
medicine
when she just decided she couldn't um
she couldn't do it anymore so she was
she tried
hard and we miss her every day
thank you so much tori for for starting
that off and
sharing all that i really i appreciate
having this conversation with you so
thank you for being so vulnerable and
open
um yeah my my mother also um passed
recently
uh she passed in 2019 um also by suicide
she was just really a character uh she
kind of reminded me sometimes of like
this over-the-top movie star some of my
memories of her just like her
driving this old old mercedes benz she
would always wear like leopard print and
like
big like black sunglasses um and she
would be just like
honestly just like smoking cigarettes
and blasting like fleetwood mac and
prince and cat stevens
she had this really beautiful sweet
energy at times
on the other side of that um of all
these beautiful qualities that she had
she also really struggled with addiction
and alcoholism
for most of her adult life when she was
47
in about a week before my 22nd birthday
she did pass by suicide
sorry um
my son new camera he was like the
biggest prankster ever
you know he kept me smiling people
always would mistake me
as his sister opposed to his mom
always wanted to feed everybody in the
neighborhood
you know because i'm a chef you know he
used to always bring
people over and you know just want to
help he was very
helpful he actually wasn't feeling well
the night of the 27th in july of 2016.
and i called the ambulance to go and
pick him up
lo and behold rushing on the scene
they hit him and then they left him for
dead that was my only son
so losing him was like you know i don't
have nothing else to live for
you know i went through all of that
believe me by the grace of god i'm still
here i'm strong
he's always with me i'm sorry
you know i really can i feel like our
like our family knew each other because
my mom is exactly what your son
had done like she always wanted my
friend to come over she always wanted
people to laugh her name was maribel
peralta
she was a woman who came to this country
undocumented
um a woman who came here to
build a better life and like remembering
memories of like her scraping through
the bottom of her purse that she could
buy
like cold cuts dinner and it was always
this like beautiful moment because like
like
nina my mom loved to cook and we didn't
have a lot of money but she could feed
the whole neighborhood
it was my junior year of college and i
just remember
being in a final phone is ringing and
ringing and ringing so i'm like okay
something has
got to be up i sneak away to the
bathroom and it's
this nurse i'll never forget it she just
took a deep breath and she was like
i'm so sorry um
your mom had a brain aneurysm and she's
not going to make it
kobe was just a healthy normal 11 year
old boy
uh before he was diagnosed he loved
music and singing you know even from the
time he was little
people always said he had an old soul so
you kind of wonder if like
he needed to have that soul compacted
into his 11 years because he wasn't
going to have the lifetime that we all
thought he would have
and he was diagnosed overnight he just
was having some numbness in his hand
and the next day he was having trouble
walking
so my husband took him over to the
children's hospital and they found a
tumor in his brain
i had actually had breast cancer i had
finished chemotherapy a month before his
diagnosis
so it was just this moment of like you
can't have cancer i just took that
i just took that hit for the family he
was given a diagnosis of
12 to 18 months our whole life just
halted we said well what do we hope for
now
right what do you hope for when you know
your kid is dying and you know all the
things that we imagine
like graduations and marriages and spar
mitzvah and being a productive member of
society was just
up in the air and he said you just hope
for what you can
his bar mitzvah was scheduled for
december of 2017
and he hung on to get to that bar
mitzvah the whole community was there
the sanctuary was filled and kobe was
just singing his heart out it was like
the holy angels were shining on him and
um and then a few days after his bar
mitzvah the tumor just grew like it was
his body
saying it was enough i fought long
enough and then um
seven weeks after his bar mitzvah he
passed away
kind of uh melanie pointed you know uh
kobe has such an amazing spirit that it
you know it it couldn't last the entire
lifetime and that's kind of how i looked
at my mom was like
she was just so amazing that it wouldn't
have been fair if i had it for
more than 15 years she was not
everything she was my mother and my
father she was like a
real spiritual kind of woman we were
jewish jewish
you know the fact that my sister and i
were black and she understood that
society you know might
you know look at us a little differently
she always made sure that we knew we
were just as valuable as everybody else
and
there's nothing we can't do she had the
biggest heart that anybody
i've ever known and i maybe took to a
fault she used to
drive around and if people were on the
street she would offer them a place to
stay for the night and
you know they could come into our
basement and and crash for the night
she'd offer a meal or something she
couldn't cook
to save her life but she would solve it
or something
i thought i had time kind of i was naive
when i was three my mother was diagnosed
with uh
breast cancer i went away into remission
when i was around 10.
and then when i was around 12 11 it came
back and she passed and i was 15.
[Music]
it was kind of like you're like in the
middle of superman like halfway through
the movie but he's going through some
battle and looks like he's going to lose
but you know he can't lose because
there's still
another half of them to be left
[Music]
brett something you said that i think
really rings true
is you said that you you sometimes just
sit with your grief
and that to me is very powerful
you know people are uncomfortable around
people who've suffered a terrible loss
and they don't know how to they don't
know how to behave and sometimes
um we just need we just need the
presence of someone who loves us
we don't need words we just need to feel
the presence of someone
felt like i was always thinking about
death and suicide and grief
you're trying to be comfortable like a
why you're like
why did it happen why did this happen um
and so it just really infiltrated almost
all of my thoughts and there was a
moment when um
i i was just so low and just really kind
of detached from
myself and my purpose and you know
that i myself one night was experiencing
um thoughts of suicide and
you know nobody would have known because
i wasn't like i was just in my
room it was a dark room i wasn't texting
anybody it's like i wasn't
telling anybody what i was experiencing
that moment but for whatever reason i
had a friend
um call me just to check in and this
again was two months after my mom's
passing so the fact that i had a
community in place
that knew you should check in with
people more than a week after someone
dies
it says that your grief doesn't end in a
week we um
ended up talking for two hours and
laughing and
um just because i had someone
there in that low moment of grief to
just be like hey like how are you like
and just
pull me out of that um
that space um
um i honestly just don't know if i would
have survived
they're like we really think you should
see a counselor and for me
i grew up in this hispanic household
where like
therapists doctors like the stigma of
like going to something is like you're
crazy
and once i started um it was really
beautiful solidified and created like
so much of like a stable ground for me
to be able to be like i'm
not just okay i'm doing fantastic and i
still miss my mom and that's
okay
liz you're doing right you know to think
of all the goodness
um you have a light around you you know
at first you know i tried to ignore it
uh i didn't want to talk to anybody
about it i didn't want to go
like therapy i didn't want to
acknowledge it i wouldn't even
you know say my mother's name for for
years i didn't tell my mother's name i
didn't want any like memories where i
wanted because i mean it just hurt too
much
but now uh it's kind of it's almost the
opposite
i say her name and i start to smile and
i think of her face i i feel warm and
i'm getting a little choked up but yeah
i lost my child
but you lost your childhood um
and i feel that a lot in what you're
saying and
that's where my heart goes to you um and
i saw that in
you know my in my kids journey you know
they just had a few years that they were
living with a sick brother
but um to be living in a home with a
sick parent
for 12 years is a long time then i see a
lot of my son micah and you he was
10 when kobe died and he escaped into
harry potter and into books and really
introverted
if it's going to take you a thousand
years
to heal let it take a thousand years
it's okay to cry
it's okay to be angry especially in this
time when we're
grieving alone um it's a different kind
of journey entirely
and know that even if you're physically
alone you don't have to be spiritually
alone
i would say to rat and to other people
who've recently lost their mother
you know she would not want you to be
sad and
she did not do this to hurt you so
so focus on the the memories that you
have
that bring you joy and if you can
try to go out and do things that remind
you of her
in a happy way
to honor my son's memory i started
producing music
i started taking the music that he left
behind
putting lyrics to them i just keep
myself
you know wrapped up into into his
everything that he likes because i still
wanted to
live on music like nina so i'm pretty
sure if you're my friend
i've taught you how to dance bachata
exactly my mom loved bachata she loved
to dance
so i try to embody that and everything i
do
i have this in my kitchen and i look at
it every day
and i try to remind myself that um
you know i have the right to to find
joy and i look for joy in the world and
i would ask
that you do the same thank you terry
i love that thank you so much um yeah at
any time
if you don't know if i'm ever in your
city and you want to come to a show i'll
put you on the guest list this has been
a really healing
really healing talk today talking to you
nina i feel like your words are like
just another verification like liz your
mom loves you she's proud of you
um and i just like thank you you're so
sweet i feel the same way about you
trust me you we are we were brought
together for a reason
and believe me i'm in your corner 100
you could call me whatever time i'm
always call you
i'm going to call you for a bachata
session one day i'm going to be like
okay
i love it thank you so much i wanted to
make sure i said that before
this all ended because i you're much
stronger than i could
ever be thank you and i'm sorry for your
loss
i'm grateful that we're able to be
together in this moment
we have angels honey we are like in the
best hands
ever enjoy yourself in the memory and
spirit of your loved one because
they're always with you no matter what
i got away as far as i could