Photo: Rich Fury/Getty
Anderson Cooperknows all too well the pain of losing a loved one.
For most of his life, Cooper’s coping mechanism was avoidance. “I just sort of retreated deep into myself,” he says. “I didn’t talk to people about it. I just became very introspective and introverted.”
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It wasn’t until theAnderson Cooper 360host, 55, became a dad to sonsWyatt, 2, and Sebastian, 7 monthsthat he started to think about processing grief in a healthier way.
“I don’t want to pass along to my kids any of my own failures or limitations,” says Cooper, who authoredVanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynastylast September. “I want to be the best parent I can be, and I realized that the way I dealt with loss was effective for the time that it occurred, but that stuff catches up with you. You have to face it at some point.”
Rather than fall back on old habits, “I started talking to people about it, and the more I did, I learned things that really helped,” he says.
Those conversations inspired his new podcastAll There Is with Anderson Cooper, which explores loss and grief. “It’s not really discussed openly, but grief is a bond that we all share,” he says. “I realized this is something we all go through or all will go through in one way or another.”
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All There Is with Anderson Cooperis available now on Apple Podcasts.
source: people.com
