Ep 07: Death Does Not Get the Last Word, Friends Do | Mary McGreevy

What will you be known for after you die? Your life is so much more than a resume. Will your legacy of kindness live on? Your grudges? Your struggle to forgive? Or will it be hating cold butter, loving salty chips and chive dip, and the time you saved a goat from drowning? The stories that live on are only the ones you dared to share, and the ones you told. Being known, and knowing others, might be the richest human experience there is. One that outlasts the physical, maybe even the spiritual. So why do so many of us hide our real self?Mary McGreevy runs Tips from Dead People, the account where she reads obituaries most of us would scroll past, and finds the ones that say something true. In this conversation, we talk about the value in exposing mistakes, leaving things messy, living our real true life. Mary walks through what she's learned about forgiveness from self-written obituaries, and we talk about the strange grief of a friendship that dies while both people are still alive, still out there, still not finding their way back to each other.In This Episode Being known and knowing may be the richest human experience there isThe stories that live on are the ones you dared to tell while you were hereSelf-written obituaries are often where the deepest forgiveness shows upA friendship can end, and still deserve its own honest reckoning, even while both people are alive to feel itAbout The Best Friend PodcastThe Best Friend Podcast is where original friendship research meets real-life stories. Host Rachel Joy Swardson, founder of The Best Friend Project, investigates how women find, make, lose, and keep the platonic loves of their lives through original data, personal experience, and candid conversations.To learn more, visit The Best Friend Project.co . While you're there, discover your Friendship Archetype by taking the  Friendship Survey We'd also love to stay in touch. Come say hello on Instagram  and Facebook (we will follow you back!)  If you need to reach us, you can always email us at [email protected] with Mary McGreevy and @TipsFromDeadPeople on:Instagram, Facebook, and TiktokLinkedIn  Chapters: 00:00 Mary's theory about honest stories00:52 Welcome to The Best Friend Project01:20 Meet Mary McGreevy of Tips from Dead People02:20 The obituary that gave a best friend top billing04:15 Why the bends in the road belong in the story05:20 Scorched earth obituaries and the comments they get06:45 Forgiveness in self-written obituaries11:50 Bronnie Ware's regrets and the one nobody quotes13:15 The little things that turn out to be the big things16:20 What Mary's friends make of the work20:40 How reading obituaries changed how she lives24:10 Take that, LinkedIn: the herring factory woman28:20 Rachel's grandma, the joke, and the empty funeral31:20 Being the keeper of the stories33:40 Tennyson took 17 years to write it36:45 Can you write an obituary for a living friendship?41:10 Tig Notaro and the end of a friendship43:20 The loneliest grief nobody has a book for47:50 The narratives we tell ourselves to keep going48:40 Takeaway: let yourself be known49:40 Where to find Mary50:40 Rachel's reflection53:00 Next week: friendship and menopauseSupport the show