My Father's Bucket List with Laura Carney

Is there ever a case where living vicariously through your children is good for them?

For today’s guest, Laura Carney, living out her dad’s dreams changed her life. Her dad passed away before he could complete his own bucket list, so she completed it for him. She’s a writer and copy editor for publications like The Washington Post, People, GQ, the Associated Press, Good Housekeeping, and more.

Listen in to hear beautiful stories full of synchronicities and serendipitous moments that aided Laura in completing the list and the lessons she learned along the way.

Topics We Discuss:

• [0:48] What happened to Laura’s father? He was killed by a distracted driver on their phone when Laura was 25. She found his bucket list 13 years later.

• [2:11] How finding the list affected Laura’s grief. Before finding the list, Laura equated grief with depressive episodes as she’d grown up with depression and ADHD. The list helped her reframe her dad’s death and process the trauma and pain of losing him.

• [4:50] Completing the list. Out of 60 items, her dad had only successfully completed 5 of them. When she found it, she felt spiritually called to complete it and took it as literally as possible. She started with running items since she was a runner and would try to combine them as much as possible. It took her 6 years to complete and taught her how to fail.

• [12:23] Synchronicities lead to talking with the President. A sequence of synchronistic events begins with being tipped off about a President who still teaches Sunday school most weeks. Then happening to meet one of this President’s biographers the night before and running into him again leading up to her being able to exchange some words with this President. This type of sequence kept happening over and over and it was undeniable to Laura and the people around her that there was some kind of intervention helping to make this happen. Laura felt like she and her dad worked together.

• [18:24] List items & lessons along the way. Corresponding with the Pope and owning a large house and land and a tennis court. Laura marked off some of the items in a more poetic way and with many of them realized that it was less important to do specific items in a certain way, and more important to focus on the feelings to be achieved and the growth it pushed her towards.

• [23:36] Recording music & reliving childhood. Laura’s dad was a singer and doing this was more emotionally hard because she sang songs her dad used to sing to her and her brother. Much of the list gave her a way to re-experience her dad’s energy through others, and for this one, she ended up alone.

• [25:23] Singing at Laura’s wedding & dancing at his grandchildren’s wedding. Laura married her husband before they found the list. They honored him at the wedding by opening a bottle of 1974 Robert Mondavi cabernet he’d set aside 38 years before the day. Laura purchased a 2018 bottle of the same wine to set aside for her niece’s wedding.

• [27:43] Universal lessons from the list. Let go of what doesn’t matter, listen to your intuition, remember that being alive is a gift, stop caring how you measure up to other people, and give to others.

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FOLLOW LAURA CARNEY:

Find Laura on her website, Instagram, or Twitter.

Laura’s book, “My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free” is available on Amazon. (affiliate)

Life, Death and the Space Between is brought to you by:

Dr. Amy Robbins | Host, Executive Producer

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