Finding Laughter in Life & Death with Jennica Schwartzman

After losing her father suddenly, actress, producer, and stand-up comic Jennica Schwartzman turned to comedy, storytelling, and creative community as a way to navigate grief and reclaim her identity. She joins Beauty in the Break for a powerful conversation about healing after loss, diving into stand-up comedy, and the ways her ministry upbringing shaped her voice as a storyteller. Jennica also shares how she continues to build inclusive creative spaces while parenting and producing meaningful art.

This is what it’s really like to handle the business of death—from managing legal documents and phone calls to emotionally processing a parent’s digital life. What does it mean to become the adult in your family? What do we inherit beyond objects? And how do we feel alive again?

If you've ever wondered how to prepare for a parent's death, how to grieve creatively, or what it means to reinvent yourself after life breaks you open—this is the honest conversation you need to hear.

In this episode:

• The secret ingredient behind Jennica’s wildly creative life
• Starting stand-up comedy in your 30s (and what it awakens)
• Why grieving might be the most adult thing you ever do
• What Jennica learned from inheriting 38 books on the Assassination of JFK
• The bittersweet beauty of wearing your father’s clothes
• How to become “dad” when no one else can
• How to prepare for a parent’s death (while they’re still alive)

Jennica Schwartzman:

• Follow her on Instagram
• Get her book Behind the Screens
• See her next stand-up show!

If this episode spoke to you, you will love Episode 3: Foster’s Loss where she tells the story of her late-term pregnancy loss and the beauty on the other side. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
• Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

Editor: Bessie Fong

Special Guest: Jennica Schwartzman

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Beauty in the Break. I'm Foster.

And I'm Cesar.

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open and how we find beauty on the other side.

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone. We are here with you.

Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.

Hey, everybody, and welcome again to Beauty in the Break, a show about resilience during tough times in our lives.

And we are super excited you are here with us today because we have our first ever guest on the pod.

Her name is Jennica Schwartzman. She is a true multi-hyphenate actress, producer, screenwriter, and author.

She is managing partner at Purpose Pictures Productions and a member of the Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild.

She is the author of Movie Baking.

Jennica can be seen in the upcoming thriller Shattered, Hulu's Everyone is Doing Great, and Apple TV's Roar as Betty Gilpin's mother.

Oh my god, Jennica, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

Also, Jennica's a dear, dear personal friend.

And we have known each other for probably seven or eight years, I'm thinking.

A few more, maybe.

Maybe more than that. And what Jennica's bio doesn't say is that she is also an incredible community builder.

And this is one of my favorite things about you.

What I know about Jennica is I first went to one of her filmmaker brunches at her house, which was many moons ago.

Our children were probably toddlers at the time, somewhere around there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jennica would host these filmmaker brunches, and they were always family-friendly, inclusive of children, which is, as a creative who had just had kids, I was like, oh my god, am I never going to network again?

Am I never going to be seen again?

And you were like, welcome, come into my home.

The kids can also network.

We can do whatever we want to do.

We're just going to be casual and have fun.

And then you have continued to do that time and time again.

Thank you for doing that.

Well, thank you for coming.

I mean, that's half the thing is you want people to come.

And then when people come, you feel good because you get to feed them and just spend time with them.

And it's nice.

Tell me why you do that, because I think it's so beautiful and so needed and vital.

I grew up very social and hosty.

My parents were in the ministry.

They had a small community church in the desert of California.

And so we always had events.

The way that I think about as time passes is that, oh, then there's going to be a Columbo mystery night, and everybody's going to come do that.

Or then, oh, we're going to have like the spaghetti dinner musical theater night.

Like, I'm used to there's going to be an event, and we're going to throw it.

And I grew up in that atmosphere, so I was like growing up in a small theater.

We were always having people and doing things and being hosty since I was little.

And, you know, I just feel like you're supposed to do that in my parents' house because they didn't have a lot of money.

It was a very small community church.

There was a church house that they were able to use for a few years, but our house was where all of the rehearsals were.

So I'm used to also the house is public property.

And so this part of the house is a little bit nicer.

And my mom would thrift and do everything she could to make it really nice.

And then people would come over and have rehearsals and do things.

So I'm used to no privacy and having a public-facing life.

My brother and I have spoken about this a few times that it feels weird to, as an adult, not be in that context anymore.

In my small circle, I think we were just famous.

This is what it was like to be famous because there was a circle of like a few hundred people that knew everything about us, everything we did, anywhere you were in town.

If you went to the copy center, if you went to the bank, everybody knows who you are.

Every elementary school, everywhere I went, like everybody knows my dad, everybody knows me.

So it was like being like a little Nepo baby in a tiny circle.

And then you went on to the real world and I was like, oh, I'm not.

It's actually great.

But we should have people over and we should do something.

Everything you're telling me gives me kind of a window into the fact that you are so multi-hyphenated.

For me, I hear that.

I'm like, whoa, how did she acquire all of this knowledge?

But you living in a larger collective house like that, you had to take on so many roles right then and there.

So it's literally baked into how you live and how you exist.

And you had to usher it to your adult life.

Yes.

Your partner, how was he with that?

It's true.

He is easygoing.

He's also a third born.

Like we're a third in our family.

And so we're easygoing about like this is what's going to happen.

He's also an actor we met as actors.

And so the idea that we would get all of our energy and time and like plan to work on things was already a part of how he does the film industry and how he was living here.

Like he was willing to show up and do theater, which in theater in Los Angeles for people who are not local to Los Angeles is very different than places like Chicago or New York.

L.A. is very much like Wild West.

You're in the wind.

The only people who can do it are people who are very, very, very committed.

And it is difficult.

And it's like we're not in an arts hub at all, even though there's tons of us doing it.

It's like doing theater in any other city in America where you would just get a bunch of people together, work really hard to raise enough to get that theater and then rehearse.

You know, you're just very much on your own.

I think that he already had the necessary components that would attract me into a personality like his.

And he's easygoing and he's also extremely capable and strong and able to do things.

And so we have produced a lot of movies together.

And then he was already writing when I met him.

So we're like writing scripts together.

So I think a lot of what you do in the art world, it just translates to that's how you live because you're doing it in your kitchen and in your living room and other people are doing it with you.

And I just think that is the lifestyle already.

The bohemian everybody's everywhere thing.

That kind of explains so much about all of the things you do, although I am also in the arts and I don't feel like I can touch a candle to what you do because you just have so much on your plate at any given moment from producing to acting.

How do you decide what to take on and what to add into the fold?

It's really something that you're still learning how to do every day is how to say yes and how to say no.

I'm good at a goal setting.

And I talk about that a lot with people that you only have so many hours in the day.

Once you become a parent, you realize how many hours of the day you actually have and you can prioritize it a little bit faster, a little bit easier.

I know that I have a lot more interest than what I'm able to explore.

And that's always heartbreaking.

And having to hold that like, what can I not live without?

And so I try things because I want to know like, what can I not live without?

I need to make sure that's part of it.

But I also let go of what it needs to be when it's done sometimes, not when it comes to movie making, but when it comes to other things like writing books or doing a play or doing stand up comedy or doing things.

I have to let go of the achievement box that I'm trying to emulate.

When I see something and I want to do something, I have to make sure that the process of doing it is the thing I want to do.

And the process of doing it definitely makes things fall to the wayside pretty fast.

And so, for instance, I had somebody bring me a film last year to say, I would like you to produce and work on this film.

I was able to look at it and assess it in a second.

I was like, I don't want to spend my time on this, but I can't wait to see it.

Like, they think this would be really good.

I think this would be fun.

But I don't think this is for me because I can't see the daily life of this and this is sustainable.

And the project had adjusted and come back to me.

And I was like, oh, well, I'll do this.

This is a version that I feel like I will feel hopeful and I will.

I think it's sustainable.

I think that it can be commercially viable, go to the marketplace and be successful.

I've already assessed it, that this would work under these.

But I didn't pitch that back like you should do it my way.

It just came back in a different version.

But you have to like be really ready financially in time and with your partner and with your attention.

I need to dedicate these three months to hit that end goal of what this looks like and make decisions and do things.

And I can only pick that up two or three times a year where I need to take a project to that end goal.

But I've been working on it for six years or I've been working on it for 14 years or I've been working on it for two months.

You know, just depends on where my ADHD is and how well I'm managing it that time.

Are we as artists ever done?

Oh, no.

Never.

No.

Right.

So for you to make that note of like I have books that I've been writing or something I've been working on for two months or three months.

And also you looking to make sure you can check something off.

But getting yourself held to that box a little bit might trap you in the same box.

Your ability to say, no, I don't need to at this moment is a very unrepresented muscle in our lives right now.

I feel like so much of us feel like you got to see the thing through.

You got to complete it.

Yeah.

I personally spent 16, 18 years doing a lot of music.

I've played hundreds of shows.

I've written so many songs.

I've done so much work for it.

And the entire time I had this image of where I needed to get, where it wasn't completed until I got there.

And I never got it.

I never got to that point.

I still got a lot of life left.

It might change.

But the moment I was freed up to reiterate, to get out of that box that I was trying to make sure I could check, right?

Was the moment that I found public speaking.

The moment that I found writing.

Yeah.

Writing.

Like all of those things.

And it also doesn't mean that that previous box is just erased either.

No.

You found such a great way to, again, constantly work your muscle out to say, whatever vehicle shows up for me, it will be used.

And you can park that vehicle, get out, go somewhere else, find another vehicle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're kind of pushing your own creativity of you as a person.

I have a lot of confidence.

And I don't care about the weight of other people's judgment all the time.

Heard that.

And that really helps.

That's very freeing.

So in that confidence, can you talk about how you started stand-up comedy not that long ago in your, I don't know, 30s-ish?

Yes.

I haven't said this in the world yet because it doesn't matter.

I'm happy to share it.

People who do stand-up comedy will occasionally be like, so how long have you been doing this?

And it's really easy to just be like, I don't know, I feel like I've always knew I was going to because I don't want to be like seven months.

Yeah.

You know?

Like I don't want to be in the middle of an evening and then be treated differently like I am a stowaway.

I never wanted to do stand-up comedy, but I always wanted to participate in that in some way.

I knew it would be an impossibly scary, difficult, really physically painful, anxiety-inducing activity because I love performing, but I love performing in a character.

I love performing a work of art.

I love being a part of the process.

I love the rehearsal of it.

I love being directed.

I love being a little bit of a cog and a little bit on your own because you're in the wind, like you're in front of the audience, it's you.

Stand-up comedy is different.

You are responsible for what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you pivot in the moment.

And the idea that you are representing yourself like a persona version of yourself and representing your work, the writing itself, is so much weight and pressure.

I recognize that because I almost exclusively consume stand-up comedy.

It is like my favorite thing to watch.

And I have friends who are stand-up comics and I'm like, I love you, but like, I like sitting here on my couch and watching stand-up comedy.

Like, this is the thing that I've been watching since I was very young.

I love it.

My dad always showed us.

And my dad was a pastor.

So really, we all know in my family, my dad was really a stand-up comic who also knew his audience and venue and spoke a certain culture.

But he really considered himself a stand-up comic.

He would write jokes.

He would get these great jokes and be like, oh, I heard a great joke.

And he can't wait to do it on Sunday.

And he cannot not treat it like it was his own club.

And so my whole life, we would watch, I mean, some stand-up comics we just don't talk about anymore because they do bad things.

But we would watch all of those comics.

And we had all the VHSs and I'd watch it over and over.

And even in college, like, I remember getting Eddie Izzard's, one of the history ones, fabulous ones.

And I just dressed to kill.

And I watched dressed to kill, like, weekly for like a year.

Like, cry laughing weekly.

Like, I love stand-up comedy.

I was never going to do it.

And then one day my dad died.

And I knew that, not in that moment, months into that excitement, I knew that there was only so many things I wanted to do at a certain age.

I think I was 37 when my dad died, 36.

I was 36.

I'm going to do stand-up comedy by the end of the year.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

And so I got up on a stage within a few months of that because it was time.

Because my dad wasn't going to do it anymore.

And it was time to do something so terrifying and so painful and so difficult that I held to the highest standard because am I alive?

So I had to prove it.

It was hard.

And it was scary.

And my husband, my partner, watches our kids because they're still young.

So I did it by myself, alone, you know, drove to a place and did it.

And that was kind of it.

And I was like, okay, good.

I can do that.

And then Jennica was there with me.

And she was like, great.

So we'll do it once a month.

We'll write a new five minutes every month.

And then we'll have a 60 by the end of the year.

That's your producer brain.

If I don't have goals to work towards, then I won't know what I'm doing.

And I have to figure it out along the way.

And it's been really fun.

So I've been doing it like two years, three years, math of time.

I don't know.

But I've been doing it a few years now.

And it is fun.

And it is anxiety inducing.

And I still haven't found so much.

There's so much more growth you have in every art form you want to pick up.

I don't know who my onstage persona is.

And sometimes I'll do it a certain way.

And then I have like a friend who's a stand-up comic.

He's like, that one's not right, though, because that one's a little too polished.

You need to be more in the moment.

And then like just every single time I'm doing it, I'm trying to hit

what I think might be the version that I can write from and I can act from and I can like perform from.

And I still haven't found her.

And I'm like, how fun to find something that's like an actual challenge.

And it's really fun to do.

And when people are laughing at your jokes, you're like, oh, my God, how silly are we?

Are we all just hanging out laughing?

And, you know, I have my preferences now.

And I have the way that I work now.

And I have I think I know which set I'm going to get and then

redo and work on and make a little bit better for the week.

And I'll dedicate, you know, a few hours one day and then maybe an hour or two another day.

And and then I'll just go do a thing that's really difficult and hard to do and scary.

And I feel like I'm growing and I feel like I'm alive.

And that was the point.

That's beautiful.

I remember so well.

The moment that you shared you were with me at it.

We were at some sort of collective thing.

I think that I was throwing and you said, this is what I'm going to do this year.

I'm not sure when, but soon I'm going to do this like a few years ago.

And now and I've come to your shows and you're so funny and it's so you and you are.

You're finding different versions of your persona.

And it's so I cannot tell you as your friend how gratifying it is and beautiful it is to watch.

You just take on this identity and kind of, I don't know, morph it into who you are and what you do.

It's all you.

It's all your art form.

All of the things that you produce and output are you.

And this is just another piece of it.

And it's so brave.

And now I have the chills.

When I watched her stand up, I felt the same.

I could see the authenticity of you still in this projection of the version of like the person who needs to be on stage, who needs to be ready.

I could see that.

I'm like, oh, I can still see her.

You've tied this line to this thing that you've put on stage now.

Right.

And I can see the dedication that's taken you to do the work on top of it.

And also linking the word dedication.

It also feels like you're dedicating it to your father as well.

It seems like there's a conversation you're still having with him in this capacity.

Exactly.

It's a conversation I wish we could have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm sure.

And considering, I don't, I didn't know your father.

And of course you're telling me this now, but I can take and hear how close you were, connected you were, at least how much you admired him in a deeper level.

And yes, pastor and comedian, not too dissimilar because you're just taking the crowd to a whole new way of thinking of something new.

Right.

Right.

So if he's that close to you and it's some capacity, you still feel him here now.

I'm sure also there's still a level of wounding and heartbreak that might be there.

Yeah.

It's super fresh.

Yeah.

My dad died suddenly.

It was just a surprise.

It was four days after Christmas.

I spend Christmas in Arkansas with my husband's family.

And my dad's here in Redlands, was here in Redlands.

And I got a phone call from a number that was just a number, but it was the area code of where I grew up, which is close to where he was living.

You know how sometimes you're like, something's wrong.

Yeah.

You answered my question.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Like, something's wrong.

I don't want to answer this.

And I answered it.

And this poor woman who is trying to do her job asked me who I was and wanted to give me information.

And I gave her so much shit.

I was like, and who are you?

And where are you at?

And what's your badge number?

Like, I don't want you to give me this information because this is a scam.

Like, I very much was so hard on this stranger who called me because they're all scams.

And then she told me where she was in my father's backyard.

So she told me that he had passed away and it had happened two days before.

He had been mowing the backyard.

And he sat down.

And he was gone.

And he still had his earbuds in.

His music was still off now, but it had been playing.

And so it was very sudden.

And she explained to me that my stepmom couldn't handle the information.

My dad and my stepmom were separating at that time.

She actually wasn't there because she was gone for the holiday because they were in the

middle of separating.

He was leaving.

He had packed up everything.

He had gotten rid of everything he owned as if he knew.

That's a whole other question, right?

That's a whole other question.

He had gone through the process of starting a trust so that his part of the house that he was in would be in a trust.

He had made this, like, trust binder with one of the lawyers that helps you figure out your end of life.

And he had given me that binder in August.

And this was in December.

And so I knew where the binder was in my office.

And he had told me what to do.

I just I thought I had 25 years before I needed to recall the information.

I'm the youngest of three.

It was my job to call my mom, his ex-wife, and my brothers and tell them.

And so the trauma of finding out your dad is gone is one thing.

But then being tasked with telling the family.

My parents were married for 31 years.

And they were, like, best friends and spent time together.

They just shouldn't have been married for most of it.

And they were better after.

He had spent Christmas at my mom's house.

And he was coming back to help paint before he left town.

Like, my mom and dad were very close.

And so I had to call her and just say, like, Bill is dead.

And having to tell, you know, she spent her whole life with him.

I am only in my 30s.

She had spent many, many, many more years with him.

You know, when you grow older, she was 68.

It was her birthday.

She had turned 68 that day.

She thought I was calling to wish her a happy birthday.

But, you know, they had spent most of their life together.

And so I had to tell her.

That was hard.

I had to tell my brothers.

That was hard.

And then I had to fly home and get the binder.

And then my brothers would meet me.

And we'd go do the things.

And we had to be adults now.

I was no longer a 36, 37-year-old, like, being in my own world about what, you know, being a grown-up was.

Like, I was an adult now.

I sat at a funeral home and discussed things and looked it up in the binder and said, okay, yes, we had decided this.

And then get out a checkbook and then write checks for things and just had to do everything.

And it's expensive and it's difficult.

And I'm like, but I'm a little baby.

I'm a child.

I'm the youngest.

What do I, like, 37, do I have to be, like, a grown-up and do all these things?

And it was months and months and months of the business of death.

It was really hard.

And I just wanted my dad the whole time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because that's, he was the, you know, not everybody gets a responsible dad.

And not everybody gets somebody that they trust and they want to talk to.

Some of his cerebral-ness could have been huge issues in our life, but I already knew it.

So we had a good relationship.

We had been talking.

We had plans.

I took home all his things.

And then I had to do all his work.

I had to pick up his life where it was and take it to the business of death to the end of it.

And it's very, very, very intimate to do that, to get someone's computers.

And I know the passwords because they're the same password on my computer.

I know how he does this because I did that with him.

He had just cashed out all of his retirement because he loaned us some money for a down payment

on our house that we had just bought.

And we had just paid it back.

So I was very intimate with his finances.

I had to Google what to do.

Right.

Because I didn't know, like, what else to do?

Okay, how do I file his taxes?

And I did that wrong because I guess I didn't sign it at the bottom because...

Oh, that was it?

Yeah.

That was the note?

And the IRS, they gave you...

They sent it back and they were like, this needs to be signed.

Of course.

And I was like, oh, that's me.

On brand.

I sign for Bill now.

Okay.

And like calling AT&T and calling, like calling every single company and say, may you please

speak to your bereavement department?

And then discovering that some companies don't have a bereavement department.

And I was like, look, you need to get it together because all these other companies have a bereavement

department.

When he died, his student loan stuff kicked back in from 50 years ago.

And so I started getting bills for like a student loan.

It was like $1,000?

What is it?

It was like $1,900.

What?

Oh my gosh.

I got this bill and I was like, oh, he's dead.

And they're like, well, you need to send us an original death certificate.

And my aunt had already told me to have 10 originals, you know, made because I'd have to send originals.

And I was like, you know, I'm not going to send you an original, but I will scan it and

send it to you, which was good for these companies and the government.

And they're like, no, we need you to mail an original.

I was like, well, you're just going to mail me bills for the rest of your life.

Because there's only so much you're willing to do at this point.

But like there is so much and you have to shut down everything.

And, you know, we had his phone so we could see what he was listening to when he passed

away.

Like I could see every email he's ever sent ever.

And that's hard to violate a little bit of the privacy that you think you have because

you think your computer is yours.

And then one day your daughter's like, no, it's not, though.

So I'm going to be looking up things and what else do I need to cancel?

What else do I need to do?

So I have to go through everything and I can see any email you've ever written.

And I can see every email you've ever talked about me.

I could see every email you've ever sent to anybody.

When you were getting divorced, I can see all the interactions you had with anybody about

anything.

So my dad and I are closer post-mortem than we were then because I know all of him.

And because you know all of someone, you're just so much more graceful about the relationship.

Like to know all of a human is to give the same grace that you give you.

And to know all of the intimate things that are not my business, but now they're mine.

It feels like I downloaded more of just memory and life with my dad.

I feel like it clears up thoughts.

It gives new confusing thoughts.

You know, like it's a wild ride.

But because now I have two people that I know all of, that I can know all of, that I can explore.

There's so much more radical acceptance and understanding and humility in my love of humanity, having known a second person more intimately than I ever could.

I just think that I really grew as a human and we're closer than we ever could have ever, ever, ever could have been because of his generation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We were never going to be as close as I could ever imagine.

And now that we're there, I'm like, that feels right.

I can still hear his voice.

And we have, you know, 10,000 tapes because he was a pastor and recorded every sermon for 20 years.

Right.

So I literally have his voice.

I'd say most of what he said was not as progressive as who he is was before he passed or even then at the time.

I'm much harder on pastors.

I used to hold this thing where I was always give pastors an extra bit of grace because I understand what their life is like.

And so I'm always on the side of the pastor's family.

No matter how horrible and abusive and terrible that church bad thing happened in that church closed.

I was always like, well, I'm on the side of the pastor's family because somebody has to be.

And I understand what it looks like.

We've had a church closed when my dad was a pastor of it.

He closed the church when my parents got divorced after 20 years.

And it was just, I understand.

I don't think it's good, but I understand.

So I can give that extra love and support in a place where other people can't because I know why.

But now I'm harder on them.

Just because I know more.

It's hard to do that.

But when you stand at a pulpit with a unidirectional public speaker, you understand.

What you say out loud is something you do have to stand behind.

And I do think that there is a lot of vulnerability and humility to take real you to a pulpit and speak it in a sanctuary of any religion and have to speak on behalf of like, you're hoping God will meet them in an application for their life.

And you're hoping you're serving up just enough of who you are vulnerably, truthfully, with reflection, with education and research, that you are putting something out there you can be proud of.

But at the end of the day, your real thoughts are much messier and much more vulnerable and so much more offensive than you could ever really stand and say on a platform.

Right.

And knowing him more intimately and then getting to know him after he was no longer a pastor in his reasons of like, well, I'm never performing a wedding again.

And you're just like, I know you're saying because you're divorced, but why are you really saying it?

And getting to know somebody as they become whoever they're going to be.

I think it's okay to say whoever you are in a platform probably isn't who you truly are, no matter how hard you try.

Yeah.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with that.

No.

And I think.

You have to do it.

Yeah, you have to do it.

Someone's going to.

Constantly.

And what you're putting out also is the best flushed out thing as well.

You got all this internal stuff going on in your life that is, you're still trying to figure out.

And your inner body, your spirit, your mind, you're constantly, the moment it gets sort of flushed out for someone like me as a speaker, I'm like, oh, put it down because I figured this one out about life, about nature.

Let me share it and get it on out.

Yeah.

Somebody else will pick that up and do something with it.

It's important to give it.

Yeah.

And once you get that deeper understanding about yourself, that's extremely liberating for sure.

And also you start to understand choices of other people's actions.

Just from the simple fact of I now know that there's so much more in my father's life.

And now I have this deeper understanding, which, by the way, in my opinion, that's actually what being an adult is.

It's got nothing to do with how much bills you pay, how much money you got, how you are with the kids and so on.

We've just made that stuff up.

We're just kids with bigger clothes and we've decided that we made up rules that don't matter.

What's that mean when the guy's like astrology is fake?

Yeah, but so is the piece of paper in your pocket that we put squiggly lines on.

And you worship that, though.

We made all this stuff up, right?

The real adulting in the world is understanding something that you don't necessarily agree with or that you have to make sense of.

Yeah.

You said this word a few times about adult, right?

And that's the real adulting.

You have to wrestle.

You have to live in tension with things.

You have to be challenged and not have an end result.

No.

You're challenging is just like, oh, so that's just a posture.

We just hold that now.

Yeah.

Cool.

I find it humorous in a charming spiritual way as a spiritual person.

You became this adult in that way, right?

You found this deeper adulting version.

And the way you show that is by going on stage telling jokes.

That's my thing.

Like, I love that stuff.

Because, again, this show is beauty in the break.

It's two opposites, right?

The bitter and the sweet, right?

Adulting and the kid.

Yeah.

And you've done that right here in the flesh.

I just gave you that now, of course.

But you know that, essentially.

I just worded it.

I framed it differently.

What's that bridge like from there?

After you, not after, but once you were working through that, at some point, did you see, like,

I'm going to start telling jokes at some point?

Or did it just, like, occur to you like a bubble popping?

I was trying to understand the mortality of it all.

I had left my religious upbringing and indoctrination of ideas about what life and death was before.

And so having to explain to my son that my father, granddad, is gone.

And explaining life and death without, like, going to the books that people had given me as tools.

And to be much more honest, because it's my child.

And I want them to be raised with a very different idea of what my parents are doing their best.

But it's not like they fully believed everything.

They fully understood what mattered in everything, which was love and service.

Ministry is about people.

It's not about anything else.

And the idea that people use it for conversion, I think, is really difficult for me to handle still today.

My parents raised me in a people-first world.

Just knowing that I can still hold those beliefs.

Explaining to my son, who is old enough to know and understand that granddad's gone.

My daughter's a little younger, so it's easier to just say the same things,

but know that we'll have those deeper conversations as she ages.

To be like, oh, yeah, we're not seeing granddad.

We're not going to his birthday.

We're not going to his house anymore.

Why?

Oh, yeah.

You know, like, I think it'll be harder for her to pinpoint the moment.

She'll understand it fully.

But with my son explaining simpler ideas of your cup that's filled with water.

You know, imagine pouring it back into the ocean.

Imagine we're in a physical realm.

Imagine that there's a spiritual realm in which your consciousness could have been born out of

and what that would feel like to go back to.

And, you know, just a lot of like love and a lot of grace for not knowing is kind of a joyful part of being alive.

But what makes me alive and not just a passive?

Do I exist?

Am I growing?

And so to me, because of, I don't know, capitalism, the idea that I'm alive is like, where is the product?

What have I done with it?

If I don't exist, do I exist?

If I'm just sitting in a field of daisies all day long, am I alive?

Even though I enjoy the experience, is that an experience worth living?

And so to me, it was about growth.

So I wrote down three things I was scared of more than anything on earth.

And stand-up comedy was on it.

So I was like, well, that is happening because it's on the list, not because I'm in the mood.

I'm obviously not like, let's talk about sex.

You know, I'm much more like, well, that's scary.

So I guess I have to write something down now and call places and book things and put myself in a position that I'm forced to do this because of pressure I'm putting on myself.

Well, it's beautiful, too, because you get up on stage and it's kind of the least product-oriented process of all the things you do.

This is, you can record it.

It's only process.

But it's just process.

Stand-up doesn't always translate to video like it is being live there in the room.

And these moments are passing.

And it's just your beautiful honoring of your father and the three-dimensional human you discovered he was.

Yeah.

And you're just going to continue doing that because that's the joy.

That's the life.

Yeah, the living part is the living part.

Whoa.

Being on stage is the thing.

And when I'm done and I walk off, I'm just like, there's a wait off because I'm done.

But I'm also happy because I'm excited and I'm filled with all of the cocktail of hormones that flowed in the moment.

And then I go off and I'm just like, oh, that was over.

That was so fast.

I should really be doing this longer so I can at some point check in that I'm there because I don't have the time to do it.

I love that thought.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

You know, you play music.

Absolutely.

There's a moment.

I started doing open mics at some point.

I was like, wait a minute.

I'm just getting started.

Wait, hang on.

Can I do like two more songs?

No, no, no.

You're done.

We got Jonathan's Elbow coming up next or whatever the band is called.

So, yeah, when you have longer shows, you can take a moment and say, oh, here I am.

Here I am.

I did the longest I've gotten to do is I did a few 30 minute sets and I was like, that's just not long enough.

In the moment, I'm like, I'm still high in my chest voice.

I'm still not regulated my breathing.

I still haven't caught on to it.

I can hear and I can be present and occasionally like in moments about things and and understand what's happening.

for a second, but I'm not like in it.

Like I understand because I did theater my whole life.

A show is like an hour and a half.

Yeah.

So like I should be up there for at least 45 minutes for me to be like one role in the show.

I'm so into myself.

I'm obviously a lead in all of these shows.

I just can't imagine a scenario in which I'm not on stage more.

You can't make playing music to a room full of people happen without attending and being at something that's already being arranged, whether or not you're involved in arranging it.

You can't just make it happen.

And a lot of the other things I can do, I can do independently.

But I can't do this independently.

I can do parts of it, really fun parts of it.

I do like the process of writing.

I do like knowing something's not funny enough.

I like that challenge.

That makes me feel alive.

Like, ah, that sucks.

It's really finding the flow.

It's all about getting into that flow state as quickly as we possibly can.

Yeah.

Because, you know, you can apply that to parenting your child.

Like the moment when they actually look up at you and actually take you in and listen is so fleeting.

How can I be present in that very moment?

And then it's gone.

Right?

So it's shortening the gap between, oh, this thing is terrifying and, oh, I'm having flow, but they've pulled you off stage already.

Yeah.

It's shortening that up.

Yeah.

We have bridged the bitter and the sweet, right?

At some capacity.

Have we not?

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

There's so much that comes with it.

Yeah.

I go back to that phrase often because it's my favorite emotion, actually.

It's the totality of the human experience, right?

I love that too.

I call it tart.

Tart.

That's a good one too.

Yeah.

Because it's like sour and sweet.

You know, I like tart.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm with you.

My entire perspective is that same sort of cup that pours back into the ocean.

I am a conscious being having a human experience.

So every single thing, even the parts like that joke wasn't good.

I'm like, that wasn't good.

Yeah.

You know, or out loud, I'm like, I'm really upset and angry.

But there's a part in my head that's like, okay, this is what angry.

It's like, got it, got it, got it.

Oh, whoa.

This human experience, right?

It's really cool.

You're like, ooh, this is a scary storm.

Yeah.

Like, it's a scary storm.

Like, yeah, that's cool.

Yeah.

And then now you've got to at least some sort of part here where you're finding this joy

in doing it.

It's not like you're like, all right, this wasn't it for me.

I'm going to step off the stage and not go back on.

You're finding something for it.

No, it's still hard.

Yeah.

Do you get a piece of, do you get a bit of like healing from the grief of loss, from

the loss of physical connection with your father?

No, I don't think that I'm getting much.

You guys know.

Loss is, I feel like it's raw and it's day one every time I visit it.

I visit it less often.

And I'd like to say that the healing could be that I'm visiting less often and that I

feel a lot of peace and joy when it comes up.

But like, no, I still feel a very physical, visceral reaction to day one.

And, you know, I've been to therapy and I just don't feel like that's going to scratch the

surface.

I feel like that's not going to do it.

I think that the only value towards that is that I feel like I'm doing something as well

as holding the grief.

My hands are full.

So at least that's good because, you know, capitalism.

So I feel good about it.

But I would I would like to talk to my dad about other things.

I think he would have more fun talking about this.

Oh, really?

I think he'd be like, all right.

Now tell me that joke.

I think with my dad, I'd rather when I'm in his car, his car is like a midlife crisis car.

It's a little Miata.

The top comes down.

Nice.

People compliment my little Barbie car.

And I'm like, thank you.

It's my dad's midlife crisis.

He'd love to hear me say that.

But he's not here.

I'd love to talk to him about it.

I'd love to go for a drive with him and talk again.

I listen to his music in there.

I can't change the radio station.

So that's beautiful.

So we can still talk.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

So there's other places that we can heal and talk.

But I just I just don't know how you get away from day one.

And I guess I just don't.

You know, some people are just really like dramatic and weird.

And I feel like I've always just full heave cried so easily since birth.

That's just my gift.

It's on my resume as an actor.

My special talent is you want me to stop?

I'm just holding it back at all times.

I just live permanently willing to have a good cry about something.

And so I don't feel like grief is a fun thing to hold when I'm already wired this way.

Because I'm like, I don't know, I could just go cry about it.

And anytime, literally in grocery stores, I'll see Pierce Brosnan on a magazine because my dad

looked like a little bit of Mel Gibson, a little bit of Pierce Brosnan.

So sometimes when I see them, I'm just like, and then I have to check out and I'm like,

everything's fine.

My dad dies years ago.

It's okay.

Yes, those apples are mine.

Please check those.

Yeah.

Just like tears are streaming.

I'm like, how was your day?

So I don't know.

It's hard.

That makes you alive too.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

And that's the magic of who you are.

And that makes you really alive.

And that honors him too.

I don't know that it gets any easier in quotes, really.

Right.

It's just, it just morphs.

Just keeps morphing.

You also are taking on the thing that I foster and you listening for the most part is very

scared of losing their parent.

Mm-hmm.

You, for the sake of this conversation of the three of us, it's some capacity.

You've pioneered this because you are showing us what it seems, what it feels like.

The small things.

You said writing a check to these companies.

In my head, I was like, oh my God, the little details.

Do you have a checkbook?

No, I don't have a checkbook.

But the fact that I know that you spotted the detail of something, it makes me like, what's

the detail I'm going to recognize in that moment of losing mine?

I don't even like to think about it, you know?

And here you are in the flesh, literally becoming the blossoming thing out of the soil of loss.

There's something about being in Los Angeles, a little inside baseball here.

I was having a meeting with the director the other day.

He was telling me about a script that he wanted to make.

And he said, it's this road trip between these two guys.

And I was like, and whose father's ashes are they spreading?

And he laughed and he pulled back a little bit because it is about that.

And I said, well, I've read a lot of those scripts in LA.

Oh my goodness, wow.

Everybody's going to go on a road trip to spread their father's ashes.

Is that not due date also, right?

That's due date.

That's Galifianakis and...

It's a trope now that people in LA whose film careers

are now to the point where they can make movies

are at the level and age in life in which they're losing their fathers.

And losing your mother is really hard.

I don't want to ever do that.

So that's not on the table, mom.

Just get it together.

But losing your dad, I think, messes up a lot of people who have a dad

and that they like their dad at all.

And I think it has to do with patriarchy.

It has to do with a lot of things.

To me, it had to do with...

I lost a very, very deep, I don't know, like, anthropological wiring of who a dad is to be your backup.

A strong, force, backup person.

Trustworthy.

You know, he had a lot of those classic, traditional things about him.

Having been the breadwinner.

Having been in ministry and having been wise, having, you know, a library of books, always

being in study.

You know, my dad embodied a lot of those silly type stereotypes that I think really work.

He liked to work out all the time.

So technically, he was strong.

Not as strong as my eldest brother who towered over him at 6'6".

It was always the strongest one.

But like, my dad was like, classic in a lot of ways.

I could call him if.

So like, my electricity was turned off in college.

I'm going to call my dad.

What do I do if I don't want to tell my roommates?

And he's like, well, that means that someone has to come to the meter and turn it back on.

So someone, you have to call and schedule that.

You know, like, he knew things.

He knew how to pay a bill.

He knew how to do things.

So when he was gone, I didn't have that person anymore.

And that, I think, is much more identity crushing and restructuring than a lot of other figures you might have in your life.

If your father or father figure or person in your life, that man in a patriarchal society, who did embody things you could trust and for him to be gone is so scary.

Even today, the way that we can't pay our bills comfortably is something I'm very familiar with because I lived in Los Angeles for like almost 20 years.

But when I'm talking to my therapist about it, she's like, wow, it's really hard to be like this for all these years.

And I was like, yeah, but but something's broken now because my dad doesn't exist.

It's not like he had money.

It's not like he could help.

But like something's broken and it can't be fixed.

So I encounter a lot of people who have to write about a new coming of age.

You know, you have a coming of age where you become a person and that is a genre of movies.

And now you have a new coming of age, which is some people would call it like it could be quarter life crisis.

It could be midlife crisis.

It's whenever your dad died when something broke.

And you have to figure out who you are.

And I had to figure out that I was the executor of his estate.

I had to find out that I was dad.

And that is weird.

My spouse embodies all of these things.

I married the good parts of my dad in so many ways.

And my husband is there, but he doesn't serve the same purpose in all of these, you know, like we're partners.

It's different.

But now I'm dad, I have to live differently and it rebuilt my identity and I feel differently about I need to know.

What is the name of the funeral home that's closest to my mother's residence if and when we have to call them?

You know, like I have to know the things now because my brothers mourned dad the way I think sons mourn dads, which might be different.

They're not the executor.

They weren't ready to spread his ashes.

I had to be ready.

You know, I had to plan the funeral.

I think they'll forgive me for saying out loud.

I think it was harder on them to get there.

And I didn't feel like I was allowed to have it be hard to get there because I'm dad.

And so he bestowed a certain type of crown that requires a certain type of excellence that is performative for a father figure.

I think that there's a lot of movies that are going to be written by a bunch of filmmakers who typically are a bunch of boys who are becoming men for the first time.

And this is their real coming of age.

And that road trip is a romanticized version of what it means to rebuild and create an identity, a coming of age.

So it's also hard because that snip snip of him being gone happened around when I had come to the place internally where I was okay that there is no afterlife life.

And I never got to sit in a romanticized version of talking to my dad in heaven.

You mean like the destination, the personified destination of a location that we all go to kind of like after a party, like the place where we all hang.

Okay, got it, got it.

A version of consciousness that has the physical realm benefits of communication.

And the idea like that he's looking down on you or that he exists, those romantic things I might have held for a minute when I was a child, but I didn't really hold because I didn't really hold any of those beliefs.

But I liked the warmth of the idea.

And so when I talked to him, I know I'm not talking to him.

And that's more painful.

And I wish that I had a little bit of a crutch there.

And I had already come to that place before he was gone.

So just building that like something is broken, you know, the chasm and the gone had more to do with me wanting to feel alive.

It was much more of an existential crisis about my mortality because of all of that.

So that's hard.

It's ever giving in a lot of ways, the goods, the bads, the everything.

It makes you recognize how valuable something is.

A friend of mine whose other friend passed away and they've known each other for a long time.

And then the following two, three weeks, he's going out to lunch with all of their old friends.

Right.

And like that one loss made all this unifying thing.

Every new vine just starts popping out and spreading everywhere.

Yeah.

There's a lot of love that can come from people who are hurt.

Yeah.

And to them.

Although I have a lot of friends who've been widowed and widowers and people who've lost their person.

And I think that it is much more messy, much more painful, much more complicated forever because you're dealing with their friends and their friends feelings about your life forever.

And you have to hold that.

I think that it seems so much worse to lose a partner.

And I never want to experience that, obviously.

And losing your dad.

Like losing my dad for me was like, all the dishes are broken.

But I can still live my every day with my partner.

And so I can build that new identity in a safe place.

And I know a lot of people who I don't see how I don't see how they do anything.

I don't.

I just the pain is just too great to fathom.

The complication of like a friend no longer being your friend anymore because they can't look at you without thinking of their dead friend.

And so they can't be your friend anymore.

You know, the people are doing that to each other because hurt people hurt people.

And I think that's really hard.

I don't want to do that.

Yeah.

Unsubscribe.

Right.

Exactly.

As a person who's very fearful about losing their parents, you're very inspirational.

I'm watching you in this space right here.

Work through it.

Become something else.

Iterate.

I mean, you have no choice but to continue.

But your choices of what you're doing in continuing is very inspirational.

Truly.

I know.

I know it feels like you're not doing anything.

I know that look of like, yeah, well, it happened.

I had no choice.

Right.

And what I think you are doing is you are seeing everything from all angles.

Right.

All parts of him.

And you are telling a version of this story that has multiple angles.

Right.

You're telling a version of it and you are owning this story of who your father was outwardly,

who he was inside, how he lives in you, how you have become father, how you have integrated

father into who you are.

And understand that that's the goal.

That's the challenge, actually, in front of you is how do I integrate father?

You've just woven a beautiful story out of what is continuing to be a very incredibly challenging

and unthinkable experience.

Thank you.

I don't know.

It's just so weird to age.

The privilege of having a biological parent is that you see them in the mirror, except you

keep seeing them in the mirror more and more as you age.

And I think that that is one of those things where I think that I'm doing better.

And then I see them in the mirror.

My brother looks so much like my dad.

So much.

And that is really crazy.

And it must be really hard on my mom.

It always was.

She was always mean to him because he looked like dad.

But also, they shouldn't have been married anymore.

So, like, you know, if they're having a fight, don't take it out on your kid.

But he looks like him in the mirror, I'm sure, much more than I look like him in the mirror.

But I still see him so much.

I still eat the big salad at the bowl that he ate out of my whole life.

And I'm the jogger like him.

And so when I put my dirty jogging clothes in the pile for the second day, because it's

fine for two jogs.

It's just gross clothes.

I have his things.

I have very few things because he got rid of everything except for 38 books on the assassination

of JFK.

So my dad was obsessed with the assassination of JFK.

And so he gave away almost everything he had.

And he was packing up.

And he was actually getting remarried to somebody he was dating in college.

He and Jan had reunited.

He was separating from my stepmom.

He was a romantic.

And he had a forward momentum into a new life that made him get rid of everything.

He couldn't live without 38 books about the assassination of JFK.

It's really fascinating stuff, by the way.

It's really good.

It's really fascinating.

Some of them are like really interesting, like really nice, prestigious books.

And some of them are self-published that he got at a convention because he went to the

convention.

But I have the 38 books.

I still wear his sweaters.

I still wear his sweatshirts.

I still wear his clothes.

And so I have his things.

And I hold his things.

And I wear his things.

And I eat out of the bowl.

And I do life like him.

And I read my books like him.

And I look at my 38 JFK books.

And I'm like, that's just one step too far.

I just can't.

You don't crack that one page open.

Now one page is getting cracked open.

I just can't.

I can't become obsessed.

I've got my own obsessions.

But it is interesting to see a life in only a few boxes and have to find a way to preserve

and maintain the memories and the life and the pictures and things and to be the holder of it.

And so the weight is heavy, but also the joy is flowing that when I put on his sweater and I go to work and I do things and I'm just like, there's a remnant in feel that it's dad's sweater.

And that matters.

So like there's a lot of joy still in all those things.

That's the persona of him that you've taken on for that time, for that moment, for that breath, for that lunch.

You've taken on that persona of him.

When my grandfather died and my grandfather was the patriarch of our family and it was a real shakeup of everybody's identity.

And my dad took his car.

My dad continued to get his mail.

And my dad would say to us, he got nine or ten different publications in the mail every week.

He would read all of them every week.

And my dad would just get them piled up.

He's like, I cannot believe he would read all of this.

He was such so interested even in his 80s in learning and learning and learning.

It is a rite of passage of sorts as a human.

Totally.

And it is, it's the thing we walk through.

It's not the funeral that is the grieving part.

It is the continuing to walk through the steps of this person and figure out where they still live in your memory,

where they will continue to and how they live in you now that their physical body is no longer here on earth.

Yes.

I get the image in my head of all of us as kids with a bicycle and our parent has their hand under that back of the seat guiding you through.

And then eventually, of course, you release.

And I think us wearing the clothes, driving the car, that's their hand still a little bit while we bit by bit part ways.

The most important thing is to sit down with your parents and write down all their passwords.

Get their Apple password and ask them to do their end-of-life paperwork every 10 years.

But say it that way.

Say, every 10 years, I need to turn this into dot, dot, dot, my partner, my doctor.

You know, like, make them do it for someone else.

But, like, I need the paperwork.

I need it every 10 years.

It's not about you dying.

It's not about you being old.

I need the names of all your doctors because I need it for some other person who's in charge of me who makes my choices.

But, you know, tricking your parents who are living into being easy and then look up what the funeral homes near them would be.

Maybe save the sheriff's department's number in your phone.

Neighbors.

Their neighbors.

Their neighbors, which we've done a few times with my mom.

It's like, well, we need a list of their names and their phone numbers.

But I think that there's a very important, like, action items that I hope that people take away from this,

which is ask, write things down, get a tour of their house and all of their nooks and crannies and look at things and say,

is that your computer?

Do you have hard drives?

Just intimately get to know all their things so that if and when you need more information,

like they're in the hospital because they broke their leg, you know, which is how you should phrase it to them,

that you know how to take over and do the business of death because the business of death is only as hard as your parent made it before they died.

And you can't control that, but you can trick them.

So trick them into doing what is best for you because hopefully it's 25 years away, but sometimes it's three months later.

And you'll be really glad that you got to walk into the bank with the right paperwork because it made so much of it easy because he was an A-plus student.

And I was like, as an A-plus student, I also did my trust.

So my mom does not love that I phrase it that way, but I have tricked her into giving me a few things.

So we're on our way.

Let us all be A-plus students in this life and beyond.

Where can people find you?

I'm on the internet.

Yes.

Have you heard of it?

I have.

I prefer to connect with people over Instagram.

My name is Jennica Schwartzman, but that's just asking a lot.

So it's Jennica Renee, my middle name.

But under Jennica Renee, in my link in my bio, there's always tickets to my stand-up shows,

but there's also links to my books and links to anything else that I find important, including local and global causes that you might want to check out.

And Jennica has a wonderful book, a book for families.

How would you describe it?

Behind the Screens is like a novelty gift type book that teaches you about how movies are made.

So it's a nice introduction into media literacy, but it's also in rhyme.

So it's fun to read.

It's not necessarily something a kid would read by themselves because it is in rhyme and it is about the film industry.

But I know a lot of adults who enjoy it.

It's a great coffee table book and it's in black and white doodles.

So you can color it.

And I really like to color books.

And Jennica did all the art and illustrations.

And it's so beautiful sitting on our shelf and we love it.

And so please pick up a copy of that for yourself or it makes a great gift.

Yes.

Thank you.

Jennica, thank you so much for opening your heart to us today and sharing your story with everybody.

We appreciate it.

Didn't know we were all going to do this.

This is where the story led us.

And I think it's important.

Very important.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Love you.

Thank you very much.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

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And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar & the Clew.