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One of the most challenging things about dealing with grief is the feeling that it will never end. After losing a loved one or at the end of a relationship, we feel that something is missing in our lives and fear that hole could remain forever.

This feeling of sorrow can linger for months while we cycle through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In extreme cases, people may be diagnosed with prolonged grief disorder in which they have intense feelings of grief that last all day and go on for many months. People with prolonged grief disorder may also have trouble in their personal, educational or work lives.

Psychological researcher Brené Brown shared her thoughts on the grieving process on “TODAY with Hoda & Jenna” recently and they may be of comfort to anyone dealing with loss. Brown is known in particular for her research on shame, vulnerability and leadership, and gained worldwide attention for her 2010 TEDx talk, “The Power of Vulnerability.”

“How long does true grief last in the heart?” a fan asked Brown.

“As long as it takes,” Brown replied. “We live in a culture where people need us to move through our grief for the sake of their own comfort and grief does not have a timeline. It takes as long as it takes.

“And the best thing that we can do when we’re trying to support someone in grief is—my favorite question when I’ve got someone close to me who’s really grieving a lot is to say, ‘What does love look like right now? What does support look like right now?’” she said. “And sometimes they’ll hear, ‘You know what, can you run my carpool for me on Wednesday? Can I cuss and scream at you on the phone twice a week?’”

Brown said that she loved the question because “I don’t have the answer because not having the answer is the answer. It takes as long as it takes.”

How can people best comfort those who are grieving? Brown believes it’s all about being compassionate by understanding that all people have the ability to feel prolonged pain.

“There’s a definition of compassion in ‘Atlas of the Heart,’ from Pema Chödrön, the American Buddhist nun, that says, ‘Compassion is not a relationship between the wounded and the healed. It’s a relationship between equals.’ It’s knowing your darkness well enough that you can sit in the dark with others,” Brown said.

The grieving process is complicated and not everyone goes through the steps in the same order. After a long period of feeling better, some may also experience reawakened grief in which the pain crops up again.

The powerful point Brown makes is that people shouldn’t feel pressured to get over a significant loss in their life and that if the process may be taking longer than expected, they’re still OK. In fact, avoiding grief may only make things worse.

If you are experiencing grief and feel it’s getting worse over time or interferes with your ability to function, consult a mental health provider.

Before he was a mononymous pop star who could rock out with the best of them, Prince was apparently a talented, precocious, and extremely civic-minded little boy in Minneaopolis. Long-rumored footage of Prince at a 1970s teachers union strike for local news has resurfaced today, courtesy of Minneapolis television station WCCO.

Station production manager Matt Liddy came across the clip while doing research on a similar strike this year. Looking through the footage for historical context, he noticed an 11-year-old boy being interviewed about the strike and asked his colleagues for confirmation that the boy was a pre-teen Prince Nelson Rogers. After having the footage expertly restored, Liddy needed to find another boy from the footage, Ronnie Kitchen, as Prince never actually identifies himself in the footage.

When Liddy and crew were unable to get in contact with Kitchen, they turned to historian and archeologist Kristen Zschomler. Zschomler identified the school in the background as Lincoln Junior High School, which Prince attended in 1970, and compared the footage to his yearbook picture from that year. She put WCCO in contact with Terrance Jackson, who went to school with Prince, and finally confirmed that the boy in the video would indeed go on to write “Purple Rain” and “Batdance.” “That is Prince!” he said when shown the video. “Standing right there with the hat on, right? That’s Skipper! Oh my God!”

In the video, Prince says, “I think they should get a better education too cause, um, and I think they should get some more money cause they work, they be working extra hours for us and all that stuff.” Sounds like even then, Prince knew what was up. Previously, a clip of Prince playing basketball also sent the internet into a frenzy, proving that fans may never get enough of seeing what he was up to before the fame.

Following news that at least two Will Smith projects have already been shelved after the actor slapped Chris Rock onstage at the Oscars, The View‘s Ana Navarro came to Smith’s defense and chastised studios for making, what she feels, is a mistake. The projects to be pulled so far are Fast and Loose for Netflix, and Bad Boys 4, which has reportedly been put on pause by Sony. Those announcements were made within hours of each other, and as Navarro notes, she thinks the studios are going overboard.

But, first, we gotta give credit to Navarro for opening her remarks with how most of us all feeling right now. “Look, I’m so tired of talking about this, I’d like to slap myself.” Same, Ana. Same.

Here’s Navarro arguing that Smith shouldn’t be judged for just one action, which pales in comparison to his well-documented history of good deeds. Via The Wrap:

“He’s had over 30 years of a career, where he’s had a very positive image, been a positive role model, he’s been very philanthropic, he’s done all sorts of things,” she argued. “None of us should be judged by our worst moment. We should be judged by our entire career. And yes, this is going to be with him the rest of his life. It’s going to be in his obituary. This is not going away. But should it define his life? Should it define his career? No, absolutely not. So I think Netflix and all those are making a mistake, and I hope they reconsider, because we should be able to separate his art from what he did.”

While Whoopi Goldberg was mostly in agreement with Navarro, co-host Sunny Hostin, on the other hand, felt that the punishment fit the crime and that people “want to feel like they want to have a say with their dollars.” However, the panel mostly agreed that any consequences Smith faces will be short-lived even if The Slap will be probably be mentioned in his obituary.

(Via The Wrap)

Kaley Cuoco may have been the most underestimated Hollywood power-player of our time, but the good news is that people are wising up about how great she really is after The Flight Attendant‘s dark flight of fancy pushed a second season into motion. The first outing was a total blast, and finally, we’re seeing more chaos and a peek at what Cassie Bowden’s been up to these days.

Uh, which Cassie would that be? This trailer shows off at least four versions with a possible imposter on the loose as the story bounces between Iceland, Berlin and Los Angeles. This is all happening while Cassie’s tackling sobriety and juggling a second job, which should all add up to a heap of trouble. Thank god Shane (Griffin Matthews) is there to bring some real talk to Cassie’s world, and expect to see several returning players, including Zosia Mamet, Griffin Matthews, Deniz Akdeniz, and Rosie Perez.

Here’s some logline details ahead of a double dose of premiere episodes:

Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) is living her best sober life in Los Angeles while moonlighting as a CIA asset in her spare time. But when an overseas assignment leads her to inadvertently witness a murder, she becomes entangled in another international intrigue.

The Flight Attendant takes a second voyage on April 21.

Magic Johnson is no longer officially a member of the Lakers front office, as he rather famously quit at the Lakers last home game in April 2019, in part so he could continue tweeting freely about the NBA as a whole without getting fined for tampering. However, he is still a very influential figure within the Lakers organization and, by all accounts, is still advising owner Jeanie Buss about organizational decisions (as does Phil Jackson).

As such, when Johnson speaks about the Lakers roster and future, he isn’t just an interested party in the matter, but a plugged in one who has the ear of ownership. So, when Johnson made the rounds on ESPN on Monday morning for Get Up! and later First Take, his commentary on what is in store for the Lakers next season likely didn’t inspire much excitement in fans.

The Russell Westbrook experiment in L.A. has not gone well, to say the least, and ahead of the trade deadline there was considerable buzz that the Lakers wanted to move him but weren’t willing to attach a first rounder to do so. LeBron James then not so subtly hinted that he wasn’t pleased that the Lakers front office wasn’t making all-in moves, and the expectation was this summer would bring another round of Westbrook trade talks.

However, Johnson indicated that won’t be the case in his appearance on Get Up!, saying he expects the Lakers to run it back. “I think they have to bring him back, because you can’t attach a first round pick to Westbrook to try and get him out,” Johnson said.

Magic goes on to say that Westbrook has played better of late and agreed with Anthony Davis that injuries played a role, but that their issues went far beyond that. Johnson says the rest of the roster will have to be retooled around LeBron, Davis, and Westbrook, but also said Russ will need to adjust his game and take more responsibility for his play, while Davis has to figure out how to change things so he stays healthy or the Lakers may have to make a decision to move on from him after next season.

It certainly sounds like the Lakers are at least strongly considering retooling with veterans and role players around their star trio once again next year, but may have bigger changes coming on the horizon beyond Westbrook if things go as poorly as they have this season.

In his first post-Oscars standup set, Chris Rock barely acknowledged The Slap. “I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point I’ll talk about that sh*t. And it will be serious and funny,” he explained before ignoring the crowd’s chant of “f*ck Will Smith” (he had no such patience during the following show).

Amy Schumer, who co-hosted the 2022 Oscars, had a little more time to incorporate Will Smith slapping Chris Rock (it’s crazy how quickly that’s become a normal thing to type/read) into her set. But as she told the sold-out house at Las Vegas’ Mirage Theater over the weekend in her first stand-up show since the incident, “I don’t even know what to say about the Oscars… I have no jokes about it. All I can say is that I don’t know if you saw this but Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. Did you read that in your news feed?”

The Life & Beth star said that she was “kind of feeling myself… and then all of a sudden Ali was making his way up,” a reference to the 2001 film Ali, where Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for playing boxer Muhammad Ali. (In an unintentionally amusing coincidence, he lost that year to Training Day star Denzel Washington, who was one of the first people to speak to — and pray with — Smith following the slap.)

Schumer continued, “And it was just a f*cking bummer. All I can say is that it was really sad, and I think it says so much about toxic masculinity. It was really upsetting, but I think the best way to comfort ourselves would be for me to say the Oscar jokes that I wasn’t allowed to say on TV.” Schumer then proceeded to do so, against her lawyer’s wishes (there’s a really dark one about Alec Baldwin).

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

Madison Cawthorn‘s wild claims of politicians offering him coke and orgies continues to rankle his fellow Republicans who the young congressman essentially implicated. Despite the fact that Cawthorn confessed to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that his claims were exaggerated and untrue, former GOP congressman Trey Gowdy appeared on Fox News on Sunday and echoed Meghan McCain’s call for Cawthorn to name names.

According to Raw Story, Gowdy went on an almost 10 minute rant demanding Cawthorn reveal everything he knows. Gowdy also defended his fellow Republicans in Congress by saying he’s never been invited to do drugs or attend sex parties during his time in office:

He suggested that Cawthorn was simply “hanging around with the wrong people.” Since Gowdy was in office, 29 new Republican members of Congress have entered the House. He went on to suggest that Cawthorn name names because their constituents deserve to know what they’re doing with their time in Congress and at taxpayer’s expense. If Cawthorn participated in any of it, Gowdy demanded that he come forward about it.

Again, Cawthorn has already admitted that he basically made the whole thing up, and at most, may have seen a staffer doing coke in a parking lot albeit from a 100 yards away. There’s also the young congressman’s well-documented history of lies that John Oliver recently highlighted. All of which makes Gowdy’s Fox News rant a bit unusual considering it’s been established that Cawthorn has already confessed to party leaders that he was bulls*itting. Then again, Gowdy has always had a penchant for dragging things out. Benghazi, anyone?

(Via Raw Story)

You gotta appreciate Ice-T for keeping it extra-real lately on several subjects, including Will Smith’s slapping of Chris Rock at the Oscars, along with some wisdom on Russia-Ukraine and a groaner on gas prices, but no one was prepared for Ice’s latest update. Before we get there, I want to briefly revisit how, in 2021, I badgered the SVU star with a random fitness-during-the-pandemic question, and he was gracious enough to oblige with an answer:

“I stay in shape. I have a little mini-gym in my house, so I do my dips and my calisthenics, so I’ve always pretty much been in shape. You can get out of shape very easily as you get older, so I gotta stay on top of it. Since I’m on television all the time, I don’t wanna look at myself and say, ‘Look at yo’ fat ass!’ I’m forced to be vain in that respect.”

Well, Ice-T definitely wasn’t saying, ‘Look at yo’ fat ass!’ to what he saw in the mirror over the weekend. “I just walked by my mirror,” the Body Count frontman tweeted. “[A]nd said ‘Hold up, not bad for 64…’ if I say so myself! Lol”

Well then. In response, SVU producer and director Norberto Barba offered this up: “I’m 58. I have a black sheet covering my mirror.”

And from there, a mixture of envy and appreciation rolled forth.

Take that, Elliot Stabler.

Last fall, it was impossible to do anything without some sort of Squid Game reference, with every person you know posting memes about the smash hit show or dressing up as the creepy little hide-and-seek girl. Now the show’s director promises his next project will be “more violent” than the bloody mess that was Squid Game.

Hwang Dong-hyuk’s latest project will be based on the novel Killing Old People club (sounds familiar) by Italian author Umberto Eco. The director promises the film will be more violent than the hit Netflix show. The project will be “another controversial film” that will have the director hiding from old people after it comes out (also familiar).

The director also noted that Squid Game was so gory that they needed a streaming service to pick it up because it was “too violent and investors would have been so worried.” Well, it was a hit either way.

As for the next season of Squid Game, Dong-hyuk says it’s in the works, with a 2024 release date. The director was taken aback by all the praise the show gained. “Steven Spielberg told me ‘I watched your whole show in three days and now I want to steal your brain!’” Dong-hyuk said. “It was like the biggest compliment I ever got in my life because he’s my film hero. I grew up watching his movies.”

So, to be clear, the latest trend in Hollywood is hating on old people now, right?

Last week, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that Ben Simmons “resumed light on-court workouts” in the hope of a “potential return” for the playoffs, but did not give any indication about Simmons’ status for the remainder of the regular season at that time.

On Monday, Brooklyn Nets head coach Steve Nash gave the latest official update on Simmons, and said the star guard will not suit up the rest of the regular season or during the play-in tournament.

At 40-38, the Nets are tied with the Charlotte Hornets for the ninth seed in the Eastern Conference. Charlotte owns the tiebreaker, though, which pushes the Nets to 10th. They’re a game back of eighth and 2.5 back of seventh. At the moment, Brooklyn would have to win two play-in games to even qualify for the playoffs and open the door for Simmons’ debut.

It’s been an unfortunate season for Simmons. Hopefully, whenever he does take the court, he’s back to full strength and can play like the All-Star we’re accustomed to watching.

The Nets will keep at their playoff push on Tuesday when they welcomes the Houston Rockets to town. They’ll hope to snap a two-game slide and get back on track, aiming to climb into the top eight of the East, where they’d be just one win away from the playoffs.