Luke Russert, LOOK FOR ME THERE: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Luke Ressert is the author of Look for Me There, Grieving My Father, Finding My Self.
[1:08]Since we've recorded this episode, this book has hit the New York Times bestseller list.
[1:13]So congratulations to Luke.
[1:14]Also exciting is that after we spoke, he made a quick detour from his West Coast venture
[1:20]and went to Zippy's bookshop for a book signing and we ran out of books.
[1:25]We had bought so many and there was like a line out the door.
[1:28]So anyway, really excited for Luke.
[1:31]Ressert is an Emmy award winning journalist who was an NBC news correspondent from 2008 to
[1:37]2016, primarily covering American politics.
[1:40]Since leaving broadcast journalism, he wrote Look for Me There, a travel memoir about
[1:44]its three and a half year journey around the world that took him to more than 65 countries.
[1:49]Based in Washington, D.C., he is the son of journalist Maureen Orst, Vanity Fair and
[1:53]the late Tim Ressert NBC's Meet the Press.
[1:57]Welcome, Luke.
[1:58]Thanks so much for coming on Moms.
[1:59]Don't have time to read books to discuss.
[2:01]Look for Me There, Grieving My Father, Finding My Self.
[2:04]Thank you so much.
[2:05]It's a real pleasure to be on the pod.
[2:07]Thanks.
[2:08]I have to say, I kind of devoured this book.
[2:10]I just read the whole thing.
[2:12]I was on a flight and I just, I don't know.
[2:15]It skipped the line.
[2:16]I really wanted to read it when I got it and I found it so interesting.
[2:20]Your whole journey and writing about grief and your dad and like where you went and how
[2:25]you handled everything and even how you weren't totally like fixed by the end of it,
[2:30]I thought was great.
[2:31]You know, because a lot of books are like, I went on this trip and now everything's fine
[2:35]and you're not trying to say that.
[2:36]So anyway, I thought it was great.
[2:38]Well, I really appreciate it and it was a thrill when you put it on Instagram.
[2:42]There I had a geek out moment so thank you.
[2:46]Well, why don't you explain for listeners a little bit more about what the memoir is
[2:51]about and really why, I mean, I know from reading the book when you decided to do it.
[2:55]But maybe you could talk about when you decided to turn all of your experiences into a book.
[3:00]Sure.
[3:01]Well, I'll start at the beginning in 2016.
[3:04]I left a successful career as NBC News correspondent.
[3:08]I was covering Capitol Hill and I wasn't totally fulfilled.
[3:11]Something was off.
[3:12]I had turned 30.
[3:14]I was more conscientious at the light at the end of the tunnel.
[3:17]I thought 30 was old back then.
[3:18]It's not now that I'm going to have seven until you're 46 and you'll feel like a baby.
[3:26]But I had seen, you know, friends were settling down, getting married, getting mortgages.
[3:29]I had lost a friend to 27 and my father had passed at 58.
[3:33]So I was conscientious of time and I was feeling anxious.
[3:38]I didn't necessarily know if this was my path in life or if it made me fulfilled.
[3:43]On paper, it looked great.
[3:45]I had on a first-name basis with the Speaker of the House, the President of the United
[3:48]States.
[3:49]I had won an Emmy.
[3:50]I was doing really good work and following my father's footsteps.
[3:53]But the voices in my head are, is this what you really want continue to get louder?
[3:58]And I had a chance meeting with House Speaker John Bain or a ball people who I think
[4:02]had noticed that I had been a little different in the last few years of covering the
[4:05]hill.
[4:06]And just called me into his office one day, totally unexpectedly and said, what are you doing
[4:10]here?
[4:11]And I go, well, that's odd.
[4:12]You invited me into your office and he goes, what are you doing here?
[4:15]And I said, I covered the hill, he goes, yeah, but you could do this job in your sleep.
[4:20]He goes, is this really what you want to do?
[4:22]I've seen people who are here till their 50, 60, 70 years old times of flat circle and
[4:26]they never really know why they were here or they could have done anything else.
[4:30]You have an opportunity while you're still young.
[4:31]If you want to go explore other areas of the world or even yourself, go out and do it.
[4:36]And it served as a catalyst for me to leave my job and then go travel.
[4:42]And it was about to be supposed to be rather six to nine, maybe a month, maybe a year.
[4:48]And it turned into a three year journey over six continents and 65 plus countries.
[4:53]And what I realized throughout that journey was I was doing two things is that I was one,
[4:57]I was looking for something and ultimately I figured out that that was acceptance from
[5:02]my father, Tim Russell, the late moderator, meet the press that I had gone into a different
[5:06]path in life.
[5:07]But that was also out running something.
[5:09]And that was the grief of losing my father, which happened when I was 22.
[5:14]And I threw myself into legacy preservation, I threw myself into keeping his flame alive
[5:20]and never really got to know the inner depths of myself until I started traveling.
[5:24]So the whole reason I was able to reach these conclusions was that I was going through
[5:28]a difficult period in 2018.
[5:30]And I had kept all these journals while I was traveling.
[5:33]And it was never my intention to write a book.
[5:35]And when I was going through a difficult period in 2018, I started to review the journals.
[5:39]And some of it was stream of consciousness, other, other journals were very insightful.
[5:44]And I came to the conclusion of, oh my gosh, you have something here that you should explore
[5:48]further and maybe it's a book, maybe it's just travel essays.
[5:51]And as I started to review it and write it out, I go, okay, I see what this is.
[5:56]This is something which will egg in me purpose, but then be, I think there's a lot of
[6:00]people that are struggling with grief and how to manage it.
[6:04]And also just how to talk about a reset in their own lives.
[6:09]And what it takes to do it, you know, people had said to me when I left MECO, you're so
[6:13]courageous for doing it.
[6:14]And I never thought that I just, this is self help I have to.
[6:18]And through writing, I was able to go into places that I had been scared of before was
[6:23]able to be very vulnerable and was really able to be alone with my own thoughts, which
[6:27]ultimately made me a better person.
[6:29]And as you say in the ending, it's still work in progress.
[6:32]But as it pertains to losing my dad, I'm much more of a place of acceptance and peace,
[6:36]which has made the rest of my life much, much easier to handle.
[6:40]Wow.
[6:41]That's wonderful.
[6:42]I love what you said, people said you were so courageous.
[6:45]I feel like people tell me or other people that they're courageous when like, yes, they
[6:50]think they're something good about it, but they also kind of think maybe you're crazy.
[6:54]Yeah.
[6:55]Like, like, oh, that's how courageous of you to put your inner emotions out there.
[7:00]But are they really thinking it's courageous or are they thinking like, I would never
[7:03]do that?
[7:04]It's a couple of combinations of bowls.
[7:06]And one of the things that's been so inspiring is that a lot of folks have reached out to
[7:09]be and said, you know, I've harbored these feelings, but I've never acted on them.
[7:13]Yes.
[7:14]And I just needed that nudge.
[7:16]And for me, that nudge was John Boehner, well, people, I think the nudges are out there.
[7:20]if you're willing to look for them and you're willing to accept them.
[7:23]But one of the things, which is so I think fascinating in today's world is that we're
[7:27]so interconnected and there's such an opportunity for a virtual wanderlust, right?
[7:31]Like, you can travel to any country now through Instagram or through the internet, or you
[7:35]can just be totally ingratiated in all these different cultures.
[7:39]If you want to virtually, but people, I also think feel the pressure of society more than
[7:44]ever before.
[7:45]It's you turn on your social media and say, Oh, they got married or they're having a
[7:48]children or they got promoted or they got this, et cetera.
[7:51]And you kind of feel this pressure to perform, which I know, at least I did for a long
[7:56]time.
[7:57]And it was hard to turn that off because I sort of felt, oh, am I falling behind?
[8:01]Or am I doing the wrong thing?
[8:03]And you do have friends that look at you like you're a little bit crazy.
[8:06]And they are concerned for you and you said, no, I'm being honest, this is actually
[8:09]good for me.
[8:10]Please.
[8:11]Yep.
[8:12]No, I totally get it.
[8:13]And I loved how you were going all through the world and the set of the other thing.
[8:17]And your mother was very supportive, especially at the beginning.
[8:20]And your mother is a journalist as well.
[8:23]And you got to an point in the book where she was like, um, okay, no, what are we thinking?
[8:29]Yeah.
[8:30]That's not exactly what you said.
[8:31]The mother is intuition.
[8:33]And it was part of the joy of traveling with my mother was, you know, she was a Peace Corps
[8:38]volunteer in her early 20s when she graduated from Cal Berkeley.
[8:41]And at that time, women were really sort of faced with limited options after college.
[8:46]was be a nurse, be a teacher and she said, no, I want to go travel and I want to be adventurous
[8:50]and her father is like, well, you can't do that.
[8:51]I'm sorry.
[8:52]Because what if I joined the Peace Corps and he goes, okay, you can go help people.
[8:56]And so she did it.
[8:58]And so she always saw travel as a way to measure herself against the world and also developed
[9:03]a spirit of independence and toughness in her, which she could handle any type of situation.
[9:07]My mother has always been very comfortable and uncertainty as for many years, I was not.
[9:12]And when I started to travel with her, I got to understand her separate from the role
[9:15]of mom, which was incredibly valuable.
[9:18]She was more of the bad cop to my dad's good cop growing up, more of the disciplinarian.
[9:22]And I didn't understand until I traveled with her.
[9:24]The reason she had done that is because she thought that I was too privileged, too spoiled,
[9:28]live in this bubble, needed to learn more about how the world really worked.
[9:32]And so suddenly all those lessons that I may have taken numbers with as a younger man or
[9:36]as a kid, I go, oh, I see what she was doing.
[9:39]that made our relationship much better.
[9:41]But there did come a point where she said, what are you doing with your life?
[9:44]You know, you've now been untethered for over a year and a half.
[9:46]You've done a ton of traveling.
[9:48]You really got to push yourself in a way to figure out what your purpose is and do something
[9:52]meaningful.
[9:53]So that's when I began to explore.
[9:56]All right.
[9:57]Can I find this aha moment traveling?
[10:00]Unfortunately, it didn't come.
[10:01]Yeah, how a moment actually came when I reviewed the journals later on in the journey and in the process.
[10:05]But a mother is in two issues, almost automatically always correct.
[10:09]He's something great.
[10:13]You had another funny moment where you ran into an ex-girlfriend of yours as you were traveling.
[10:18]And it was one of those moments like in sliding doors where like your life could have gone that way,
[10:22]but instead it went this way and she was there with her new relationship and you were there by yourself.
[10:28]And I feel like that was another one of these turning points in your journey of like, well, what am I doing?
[10:31]And was that the right call or not even was it the right call?
[10:34]But just like, what would that life have been like?
[10:37]Where is my life going and another ticking stock moment?
[10:41]Tell me a little more about that.
[10:42]Well, I'm happy you asked about that because it's one of, to me, the most prolific moments in the book.
[10:48]And a sense of what it happened was I went to the World Cup in Russia because it was one of the
[10:54]few times when I knew Russia would be open and relatively safe and that proved to be true.
[10:59]And you see what's happening there today.
[11:01]And I also was like, oh, this is the World Cup.
[11:03]This is soccer.
[11:03]This is the world coming together.
[11:04]There will be millions upon millions of people.
[11:06]This will be a great moment for me and perhaps serve as a capstone on my journey, etc.
[11:11]And I'm in Moscow and I'm walking around Red Square and I'm taking photos and it's a very
[11:15]jovial environment for the World Cup.
[11:17]And I see this woman kind of staring at me about a hundred yards away.
[11:22]And it turned out to be someone who I dated for about three years and had gotten close to
[11:27]marrying at one point.
[11:28]And it was completely random.
[11:30]I had no idea that she was in the country and following on social media anymore.
[11:33]So I didn't see it.
[11:34]We're still friendly enough.
[11:36]And she was there with her husband who recently married and he's very good looking
[11:41]just dapper in shape guy.
[11:43]And I was a little plugged at the time and sweaty.
[11:45]And one of the reasons that we had broken up was because she had had this wanderlust
[11:51]and wanted to travel and was kind of a iconoclastic and wanted to sort of do things differently.
[11:57]And I was very duty-bound and very regimented.
[12:00]And I'm working for NBC News in Washington DC and I cover Congress.
[12:05]And I'm Tim Mossard's son.
[12:06]I have to live up to these ideals.
[12:08]And then when I saw her, I realized, wow, she got all the benefits of the wanderlust,
[12:14]but then also the security that comes through a beautiful marriage.
[12:18]And it was very instructive to me is that I had pigeonholed myself to such a degree
[12:25]where I thought of it as either one or the other and not accepting that there are
[12:29]people out there that can operate in both worlds or that you should at least be willing to try.
[12:34]For so long, I had not been willing to try because I was so defined by something,
[12:38]either by a legacy or my hometown, etc.
[12:40]And so I saw that it was illuminating, but it also put me into a difficult spot because
[12:47]it was a lot to take on this journey that was supposed to be a capstone and almost made it
[12:52]so that there were more questions without real answers.
[12:55]And it's interesting. I sent her a copy of the book and she liked it.
[12:59]So that made me happy that she liked it.
[13:01]Oh, interesting.
[13:02]I was a little concerned, but she's like, no, it's just good.
[13:04]I was all right.
[13:05]Thank you.
[13:06]I had a memoir come out almost a year ago.
[13:09]And I debated because I did reference like an X quite a bit.
[13:12]I was like, should I send this to him?
[13:14]Should I let him know about it?
[13:16]Anyway, I decided not to, but because I see different strokes for different folks.
[13:20]I don't know.
[13:20]Maybe.
[13:23]I mean, I think that's one of the thing with writing about yourself and the characters in
[13:26]your life is that those relationships continue on.
[13:28]It's so hard.
[13:29]It's so hard.
[13:30]And I was very uncomfortable at the end of the beginning.
[13:33]And I especially in the relationship with my mother because I had grown up in a family where
[13:37]everything was kept very close.
[13:39]And nothing leaves the dinner table.
[13:41]Everything is under the rug.
[13:43]Don't be expressive.
[13:44]Don't be emotive about it.
[13:46]You know, project this image of stability at all times.
[13:49]And I came through the realization through the writing process is one, readers are very smart
[13:53]and readers want honest work.
[13:55]And I also realized that part of the cathartic process of writing is to get that off your chest
[14:01]and admit that you're not perfect.
[14:02]And that was really beneficial.
[14:05]Interesting.
[14:06]In addition to the loss of your father, and I'm so sorry that that happened.
[14:10]And the way that you wrote about it, it was, I mean,
[14:13]oh my gosh, it was just so heartbreaking, the suddenness of the whole thing and where you were
[14:17]and had just been with it.
[14:18]I don't know.
[14:19]Not like anything makes it worse, but I don't know.
[14:21]Anyway, but then the loss of your friend as well.
[14:24]Can you talk a little bit more about that?
[14:26]Because that was so tragic.
[14:27]And you had just been with your friend.
[14:28]And oh my gosh, I lost a friend at a young age as well.
[14:32]And I don't know.
[14:32]It sort of changed my life.
[14:34]You remember, so anyway, talk a little more about that loss.
[14:37]It was very obviously difficult.
[14:40]And it was a good friend of mine.
[14:41]His name was Corey Griffin.
[14:43]And now there's a beautiful foundation in the Boston area in his name,
[14:46]which has raised millions of dollars for underprivileged children to his legacy very much lives
[14:50]on in that, which is beautiful.
[14:52]And they made some hats with his initials that I wore pretty much on all my travels.
[14:56]It was my way of carrying him with me.
[14:58]He was certainly the most adventurous of my friend.
[15:00]And he was the one that had he been around.
[15:01]I'm sure it would have met up with me on some of these travels and probably not married with
[15:05]the mortgage yet.
[15:07]As such what happened is he came to visit me for a birthday dinner.
[15:10]And we had a wonderful dinner together.
[15:12]And I had to speak the next day at a charity fundraiser.
[15:17]But he wanted to find a date for the event.
[15:18]So he ended up going out and sadly died in a tragic diving accident.
[15:23]It's a tradition in Antarctica where people jump into where the ferry comes.
[15:27]And he had his wits about him and everything.
[15:30]And it's something that people have done for decades and decades and decades.
[15:34]And nothing bad has ever happened.
[15:36]But he hit the water weird angle and a breaking his neck and dying.
[15:40]And it was so difficult for me because I immediately began to replay everything that had happened
[15:47]with my father.
[15:49]And it put me into that space where you feel so helpless.
[15:53]And in this case, because I had literally seen him a few hours before he passed away,
[15:57]it was completely surreal.
[15:59]And going through the hospital and just going through the whole process of death.
[16:04]But I don't think people, and necessarily know about if you haven't been through it a lot
[16:08]is that there is this process where his family is not here.
[16:11]You're the closest thing to family.
[16:12]Can you identify this?
[16:13]Can you fill out this form, etc, etc, etc.
[16:16]And the gravity of it is so heavy.
[16:18]But what that did for me in that moment was it was an ability to place a pain.
[16:23]But in the morning right after he passed away, I was looking for signs.
[16:26]And there was this beautiful sunrise.
[16:29]And when my father had died, there had been rainbows.
[16:32]And in this case, it was a very unique sunrise that I had never seen one like this before
[16:36]with these beautiful pinks and just sort of going into the orange.
[16:39]And he loved the color orange.
[16:41]And it was just, okay, he's all right.
[16:43]And I realized you have to look for those signs because they can be very comforting.
[16:48]But his passing was also a reminder that, hey, Cori only had 27 years.
[16:54]And he lived life to his fullest in every way imaginable.
[16:58]You might want to take note of that.
[17:01]So it was something that was very much, I held close to me for a very long time to this day.
[17:06]Well, I'm so sorry that that happened.
[17:08]Can you give me the PS after the book?
[17:11]Like what happens after the book?
[17:14]What do you have to do now?
[17:15]It's a good question.
[17:16]I like storytelling.
[17:18]You know, I did not know how this book was going to be received, to be honest with you.
[17:22]It's been completely unexpected.
[17:24]The success that it's had so far.
[17:26]It's number four in the New York Times bestseller list.
[17:28]That was completely unexpected.
[17:29]Amazing.
[17:30]I can tell you that I'm telling you the truth because we actually ran out of books.
[17:33]So it's not like the publisher or Amazon had that much faith.
[17:37]But all that being said, I think I like the storytelling space, whether that's in a book,
[17:42]or a podcast, or a long-form film documentary film, something in that space.
[17:48]I think that it plays to what I'm passionate about.
[17:51]And one of the things I learned about traveling the world is that the world really operates
[17:56]in nuance and everyone tries to make things out to be black or white, but people really live in
[18:00]the gray.
[18:01]And I find that fascinating because I think oftentimes we come into a country or we come into people,
[18:07]even in our own cities and counties and states or whatever.
[18:11]And we project, well, things are like this and you're like that and he's like that, etc.
[18:16]And I've always sort of now, I think since I started traveling, looked at that and been like,
[18:20]eh, now there's got to be a better way to explain certain things and cultures and people that
[18:25]is more nuanced.
[18:26]So I think that space would be good for me.
[18:29]I think you have like the best voice ever.
[18:32]I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but I had not heard your voice for anyway,
[18:35]I think you should do something with that.
[18:38]Well, I am available on Audible too.
[18:39]And there you go, there you go.
[18:43]You can just narrate other people's books.
[18:45]You know, it's a sign of dollars that they like that.
[18:48]Do you still keep a journal? Are you keeping one now?
[18:50]Yeah, so I haven't done the full long-form journaling, but one of the things I actually have on my
[18:54]website, look for me there at our dot com, which is more the sort of wanderlust travel aspect of
[18:59]the whole journey is if you can't keep real long journals, just bullet points.
[19:04]And bullet points are incredibly helpful.
[19:06]And especially if you're traveling lately, let's say you're traveling,
[19:09]I did a lot of solo travel and most of the journey was solo traveling.
[19:11]But let's say you're traveling with other people and you have to have dinner with them
[19:14]and breakfast and you don't have time to escape to your journal.
[19:16]The best thing to do is put down your bullet points and then take a bunch of pictures
[19:20]and I realize that the bullet points paired with the picture can really transport you back
[19:24]into that moment in time. It's not as good as filling out five to 10 pages of journaling.
[19:28]That's still the best. But in our instagramification, we need everything
[19:32]quite fast. Now world get done, we can get done.
[19:34]The bullet points have been helpful and I've been doing that. So it's been nice.
[19:38]And I can't wait to get back to real journaling and put away my phone, but I'm not there yet.
[19:43]I still have to. So I have to market the book a little bit.
[19:46]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[19:50]Yeah, I think there's three things that I would say is number one
[19:54]just really be conscientious of time and don't rush things. Obviously my
[20:00]have to rush things for different reasons about what's going in your life financially or a contract
[20:05]or whatnot. But it took me four years to write this overall when I started from the beginning to
[20:11]the end and I needed every single day in that period because especially if you're dealing with
[20:17]your own emotions, you want to get it right. So it's okay to slow roll. I mean, I used to,
[20:23]I was working in MDC. I had more creative artistic friends than I would make fun of them for being
[20:28]so slow. I've been, oh, you're still working on that painting or you're still writing
[20:31]a book and oh boy, did I eat those words? I would never do that again. So that's okay. The other thing
[20:38]that was really incredibly helpful to me was chart your progress. And so what I did is every day
[20:45]I would write on my calendar. All right, this is what I did today. And I may have not written
[20:50]a great chapter. I may have only written 500 words that day or I may have only done some research
[20:54]that day. But it was a wonderful reminder that I woke up in the morning where maybe I was a little
[20:59]anxious that I wasn't moving quickly enough or something wasn't finished. I could go back over the
[21:03]calendar. But no, you have been working. You've been doing something. You've been diligent. You've
[21:06]been really trying. And I think that's incredibly important because when you're an author,
[21:12]there are people that think you're crazy. Even if you're an established one, they look at you
[21:16]like, oh, can they pull it off again? I got to become very friendly with Alan Hilderbrand.
[21:20]Yes. And she's a machine. And she'll tell you that. She's great. He's amazing.
[21:25]But even Alan Hilderbrand worries at the kitchen table at night, like, does she still have it?
[21:31]What does she have in her? And she gave me really good advice, which was that you've got to
[21:35]tune that out and make yourself aware of your own progress. And that was really, really helpful.
[21:40]Yeah. That is great advice. She's awesome. Well, Luke, congratulations. After going through the whole
[21:46]journey with you knowing that this is where it ends up with like a book on the best analyst.
[21:50]I mean, that's such a cool thing to like be on your shoulder and go from watching you,
[21:56]honestly, like grow up. I mean, it sounds so I'm not that much older than you. But you know,
[22:00]it's really interesting to get to watch someone else sort of work through it, take the time,
[22:05]like process it, share it, and then like get to this next milestone. It's very rewarding as reader
[22:11]and as someone along for the ride. So that was one of my goals was that I really was trying to make it
[22:17]like you were next to me on the journey as much as possible. And I think a lot of people have responded
[22:23]to that. It's just the notes I've been getting about folks through the process and grief for just
[22:27]going through a reset in their own lives has been so gratifying. That's the whole reason why you write
[22:32]and at least it was for me. So I love it. Thank you. Amazing. All right. Well, thank you so much.
[22:37]Thank you so much.
[22:38]Wishing you all the best. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Take care.
[22:43]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[22:47]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for
[22:52]my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on
[22:57]Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[23:02]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outroom music.