Yes, And: Improv Comedy and Life
I don’t usually go to church, but several years ago, I tried to make a habit of it—for reasons. During this time, my dog died. Suddenly. The blow stunned me. I knew I’d gotten attached to that dog but had no idea how much. I lost my mind a bit. I went out into the freezing Chicago cold to retrieve his body from under the ice he’d fallen through. Why? It was dangerous and futile. I sobbed on the kitchen floor. My friends sat on the phone with me while I cried in bed. We had a funeral. Then I drove back home to Philadelphia, leaving Chopper in a pond by the house I’d someday bring my newborn home to.
As I mentioned, during this time, I was trying to find my place at church on Sundays. The sermons sometimes included brief testimonials from members of the congregation. The timing was perfect. A woman I’d never met talked about applying the principles of improv comedy to difficulties in life. Essentially, instead of saying, “No, I wanted this other thing instead, and now I’m hurt about what I got” you say, “Yes, this happened, and this is what I’m going to do with it.”
I went home and grabbed Chopper’s hoodie, which still smelled like him, and embroidered “Yes And” on the back of it, slowly, in bits and spurts, over some months. Then I hammered it to the wall, right next to all the pictures of my boyfriend’s young daughter, who’d lost her life earlier that year — also in a different city, also suddenly.
It still takes my breath away to imagine applying “Yes, And” to Gabbie’s death. But I can tell you how it helped me heal from Chopper’s. First, there was something to the act of sewing—the physical movement while I connected to my memories, loss, and grief. It was soothing to focus on working with my hands. I liked picking the colors, learning the stitches, and letting go of perfection. This brings to mind Bessel Van Der Kolk’s findings in The Body Keeps the Score. Healing happens in our bodies, not just in our thoughts.
But my thoughts helped as well. As I sewed, I thought about reality. Chopper was old. His death was inevitable. He died playing. Not a bad way to go. And even if it had been, here we were. Reality won’t be denied. Accepting reality allows us to deal with it. As Fred Rogers said, “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.”
It’s often scary to make the obvious explicit. But, if you can accept reality, you can move forward. Otherwise, you risk becoming like Lot’s wife, who looked back toward her home burning in Sodom and then turned into a pillar of salt. Don’t become a dead sea. The way out is through.
To connect with my purpose, I first had to face a hard truth: my rage at my ex was hurting our daughter more than anyone else.
And then it became my problem to solve, not his. I looked for ways to manage my anger. I got sober, I got sad. And I also got busy, reaching for every tool and resource I could find to climb out of my post-separation hole of depression. Thank God it took long enough to learn a lot of powerful habits, because now I understand both what this transformation is worth and how to get here. As Amy Poehler teaches in her MasterClass on Improv Comedy: "Saying yes in life can help you keep participating, taking risks, and keeping your mind open. If you stay connected and you listen, something very magical could happen. You should keep the door open for that to happen.”