Today, on the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, I conclude my conversation with Tom Farley. Tom talks about his journey of grief after losing his brother, Chris Farley. Tom shared how writing a biography of his brother, ‘The Chris Farley Show,’ gave him a beautiful opportunity to know Chris on a deeper level through stories from others. We discuss the importance of family connection and the impact that embracing recovery together as a family can have.
Let’s get back to Tom Farley.
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See full transcript below.
00:01
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, a place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host, Margaret Swift Thompson.
Intro: Welcome back today I complete my conversation with Tom Farley. In this final episode we talk further about his brother Chris Farley and how Tom navigated and still navigates the journey of grief. Tom shares wonderful stories about his brother as for everyone the grief journey changes over time and what we miss and remember also changes.
01:10
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret 01:26
When you think back through your experience as a brother to Chris, you got to know him obviously, on a level nobody else did. What you talked about earlier, and I remember you sharing the story, but I’m curious which one you’ll choose to share today, was how hard it was when he was around because he was so larger than life, and friends with everybody. And it was easy. And you found that very hard when you were younger? To connect?
Tom Farley: Yeah.
Margaret: Do you have a story or two, you would want to share that talk about that from the standpoint of the humor and the exhaustion of that humor in your family, with your relationship with Chris. Because the one you talked about that I’ll never forget was in high school, when he would show up. And you were just like, oh, gosh.
Tom Farley 02:11
Knowing that he was in the same building as me was just threw my anxiety levels. Yeah. I mean, he was just always there. But everyone loved him. It was fun. He brought so much drama and excitement to my life, but sometimes a little overwhelming for me. Again, I was trying to connect and be this smart, together.
Margaret: You know, almost the opposite of him.
Tom Farley: Yeah. Well, I always felt like that imposter syndrome. I always thought they can see right through me. I was trying to kind of prevent people from seeing the real person that I was because I didn’t think they’d like that person. And Chris was doing just the opposite. He was just showing everyone. This is who I am. And that was threatening to me with Chris around there doing that. Because we were both Farley’s, we were both brothers. We were both close. And I didn’t want to like, no, I’m not like that person. But I was I totally was I am now.
Margaret 03:13
Yeah, I just remember hearing you talk about it. And having a lot of compassion for you of that struggle. Very different dynamic, my brother is older than me. My brother is not a comedian. But my brother was the Straight A, never had a relationship. No drama, well behaved, loyal, like all the stuff. And then I came along, and I was boy crazy. Honestly never wanted to be home, if I could be out, didn’t care to go to school or do very well in school, though. I went. I didn’t do well. And I was the problem child in the family. And I had this epiphany sitting with your story thinking, wow, I own amends to my brother. And the amends I owe to my brother is thank you for being steadfast in who you are. And I am sorry, for the energy I must have taken out of the family in my antics.
Tom Farley 04:11
You know that’s really interesting, because I bet Chris would wish that of me too. I’m sure he would have said you were trying to set the bar too high for me. And probably yourself.
Margaret 04:25
Totally. I was comparing and I never measured up.
Tom Farley: never measured up.
Margaret: Yeah. And so, I got my attention and other ways that were not always good for me. Not always healthy for me. And didn’t work very well, many, many times. So even though I looked like I was the socialite, and I was the visitor with everybody and maybe he felt isolated and alone. I wasn’t okay in my skin. I was an impostor because I was never measuring up to the standards that I thought I was supposed to.
Tom Farley 04:57
Yeah, so it goes both ways. Yeah,
Margaret 05:01
It does. And that’s what I love about talking to people in recovery. Because I hear things in your story that may be very different than my story. I’m in Bermuda with my brother, you’re in Wisconsin with your brothers and sister. And we didn’t have any alcohol in our home, you did in your home. Doesn’t change those different dynamics,
Tom Farley: Right? Isn’t it amazing.
Margaret: It really is amazing recovery is a great equalizer.
Tom Farley 05:25
Yeah, it totally is. It’s funny, I used to years ago, when I first started this, people would ask me, what, what do you miss about Chris most of all, and I’m like, I, you know, I missed when I hadn’t seen him on while he comes to the door, and we’d have this huge bear hug, and just hold it. And it was just, I can still feel it. It was so genuine and so brotherly and loving, that I cherished those times.
But now, when somebody asked me what I miss most ago, I saw Chris when he was in recovery, I get to experience recovery now. I would have loved to have been in recovery with Chris. Oh, my God, we would have talked about so much. Because I’m sure there were a lot of traumas, we shared a lot of traumas, we gave you to each other, tons of stuff. It would have been truly amazing.
Margaret 06:15
Yeah. To have a connection on that level would have been amazing. Yeah, I hear you loud and clear on that. I’m so glad you got a window into his recovery before he passed.
Tom Farley 06:24
Yeah, no, I do love to talk about that. People love to talk about everything else. But I’m like, I got to see it.
Margaret 06:32
Yeah. You met him? Like you said you met him.
Tom Farley: Yeah. Yeah.
Margaret: That’s absolutely beautiful. Because we on the outside world met who he put in front of us.
Tom Farley: Yeah. Yeah,
Margaret: You met him, you met the man, the boy, the person who had found something.
Tom Farley 06:48
At a time when, as I said to the family hierarchy, I was supposed to be the older one. Setting the examples just being the person everyone kinda looks up to. That time, I was looking at my little brother, like, I will never be this. Not only was he successful in his own, but he was doing stuff like volunteering at like, churches, and assisted living homes and like, why are you doing that? That sounds horrible. Because he just was needing to be of service. And I look back at it. And I’m like, awe man, that was outwardly saying, you know, that’s crazy, that’s nuts but didn’t really, I was like, kind of jealous. Like he’s onto something. He’s figured something out that like what an example, my younger brothers giving me.
Margaret 07:35
The grief process, right? It’s a journey.
Tom Farley: Yeah.
Margaret: And you spoke to it a little bit in what you used to say, when asked what you miss most what you say today. A lot of people the grieving process is medicated, because they don’t know how to do the grieving journey. Right? Like it comes out of nowhere. It’s not neat. It’s not this trajection through, it’s messy, right? Kind of like recovery, because you never know what’s going to come up when. What has your grief journey been like? Have you felt like because Chris was a public figure? It made it different. I know, it’s hard to compare, but you’ve probably lost other people in your life who weren’t a public figure. How has the journey been for grief for you?
Tom Farley 08:17
Luckily, for us Chris’s career and celebrity you know, it didn’t change us at all. He was always just my little brother. He was always Chris and I love that. It didn’t change us one bit. Because of fact, was like, we’re all pretty freakin funny. He’s just a little bit more. But yeah, that’s who we are like, you know, he just got lucky. What was really interesting to me is when I wrote my book on Chris, a biography. We wrote it, it was more like, it was an oral history. So, we interviewed all these people in his life. If I had written the book, in my voice, in my experience, especially back then, this was like 15 years ago, it would have been completely different. All those things that I wasn’t recovered. I hadn’t dealt with any of that stuff. People would have, you know, oh, he’s got some issues.
Margaret: Don’t we all.
Tom Farley: I know but it would have really come out.
Margaret: I hear you.
Tom Farley: But instead, we interview people that we grew up with in Wisconsin, people who went to college with, that we went to summer camp with then second city, SNL, Hollywood, and when it all came back in with piecing it together, I was amazed at like people’s reflection on like, his really good friends. They caught little pieces of like, it’s almost like all these people that didn’t know each other some of them did. Some had different work for them or them like oh my god, they didn’t know Chris, they saw more than probably I did, and I saw it through their eyes. I’m like, I like to say, like I have a better relationship with Chris. Now because of this experience with the book that I wrote, just really, it was part of the grieving process. But I have a better relationship than we did when we were alive because I got to see him through other people’s lives and not just my own.
Margaret 10:16
I love that. And I want to say what’s the name of the book so people can look it up.
Tom Farley 10:23
Margaret 10:27
The Chris Farley Show perfect. So, people will probably want to read it because I think that would be fascinating read. I think the thing that it makes me think of, and I’m curious if I’ll go that next question. We don’t know, facets of all the people in our lives. We know our perspective, our experience,
Tom Farley: Right?
Margaret: What a great thing to hear other people’s perspectives of the person we’ve lost and loved. When you look back over all the interviews, was there one that stands out that’s like, oh, you know, like, that really helped me in my journey of grief. Like was there a story that shocked you, surprised you just made you feel warm? Because it was just so special?
Tom Farley 11:09
Well, there was a moment there wasn’t an interview. But there was a moment we did a memorial service in New York at the church, Chris like to go to called St. Malachy, it’s in Times Square. It’s called the actor’s chapel. Chris loved it. And so, we had a mass for Chris and a lot of people got up and talked, Danny Aykroyd had a wonderful talk. And you know, and I was sitting with two high school buddies of Chris’s and mine that worked in New York. So, there was that continuity of friendship from, and they were friends in New York. And we’re all three of us are sitting together. And this gentleman gets up and it looks like, where’d this guy come from? Looks like he came off the street. And he was just an old guy, Otis, I think his name was, I think, and he had a ratty old Cubs hat, he was pretty much on the cusp of homelessness as whatever, has ratty old Cubs hat and he talked about, like I met Chris. He saw me on the street. He got me a meal once. And he was just telling this, this relationship that he had with Chris. And he said every time he came into New York, when he came back to New York, he would find me. And he gave me this Cubs hat, which I love because he knew I love the Cubs. And I never take it off. I’m really sad, he’s gone. And I’m sitting there with these three people that have known Chris the longest. And we’re like, do you know this person? Like that story did Chris never tell you? And all of us we’re like, never heard this before. And like Chris was out there doing this stuff. That he wouldn’t even tell us like his he just I just did it because I needed to do it. And we were like, whoa, do we even know this guy? I mean, it was just that first inkling of there is somebody there that we’re not even.
Margaret: Yeah,
Tom Farley: You get the tip of the iceberg is to have spent the next 25 years trying to find out who that person is. And hopefully, hopefully I got some of that same stuff myself. I don’t know. If it wasn’t just confined to him. So yeah, that was amazing.
Margaret 13:24
That is amazing moment. Yeah. Makes me imagine that. The connection is the key, right? Like the connection for him with a complete stranger who became a friend, who he cared for, we had no reason to have to or need to it was something he did. And it was somebody I’m guessing who looked at him and thought, wow, someone like him actually gives a crap about me, like, wow, What beautiful method of connection.
Tom Farley 13:53
And I talked about like, the first time when Chris, was third year anniversary, sobriety is had come to a meeting, and I’m like, okay, and he gave me this address and was in Hell’s Kitchen was like this horrible part of town. And I first thought it was like, he punked me like, you jerk.
Margaret 14:11
Well, you’ve been through a few of those, I’m sure.
Tom Farley 14:12
Oh yeah, that’s I was very I was waiting for it. But I went upstairs in this, like, just old, just ratty building filled with these I don’t where these, you know, these people came from, off the street. And there was Chris in the front of the room with his little blazer on and I had never been to a meeting and what they did in an AA meeting and Chris was kind, he started off the meeting It’s like, you know what, I’m no different from anyone here in this room. And I’m in the back of the room like haha, yeah, you’re a little bit different. And he’s like, with all the sincerity in the world. It’s like no, I woke up today like all of us in this room, hoping that I would stay sober today. And I did everything I could and here we are at the end of the day. We did it. And we get cake and coffee and I couldn’t have done it without you and I’m hearing him talk about this and I’m like, who is this guy? And it was like, that’s when I just saw what possibilities recovery can do because I immediately saw a completely different person. I heard Chris apologize to teachers. I’ve heard Chris, like, make false amends and compliance statements to so many. And this was the most honest and authentic. I’d ever heard him talk. And I know he wasn’t bullshitting. He wasn’t talking to the crowd.
Margaret: He wasn’t performing.
Tom Farley: He wasn’t performing at all. And yeah.
Margaret 15:40
Yeah. And it’s interesting, that just resonated with you, I was listening to the Glennon Doyle’s podcast yesterday. And she was talking about how she stopped speaking this whole year because she needed to work on not performing. She’s a great orator. She’s a great speaker, she can do it. But it was not authentic. It was presenting and preparing and then showing up, and how different life feels when you don’t put all that in it. You just be with each other.
Tom Farley 16:10
Yeah. And I’ve kind of learned that myself through all the talks I’ve done. And one of the podcasts or one of the books that I read is Brené Brown.
Margaret: Oh, yeah.
Tom Farley: I ask myself, a lot of times, it’s like, are you being vulnerable enough? And if the answer’s no, like, take a step back and get there. Because when I am that, personally, you know, when I do kind of work on that vulnerability, and I do, step into the arena, I immediately see, like, you know, I feel better. That’s what people want to see. That’s what I need to be. That’s who I need to be. So that’s a barometer I use, it’s like, if you’ve lost, that you better regain it. Because that’s, that’s where you need to be.
Margaret 16:51
Well and I would think seeing Chris in the moment at that meeting, to now living your own recovery, and showing up at the meetings the way you do like, again, another full circle moment of the gift he gave you.
Tom Farley 17:01
Yes, yes. Yeah.
17:04
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18:03
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Margaret 18:14
I am so appreciative of your time and your story. I wonder if there’s anything you feel you need to say want to say before we close something you haven’t shared that you think would be valuable to our families?
Tom Farley 18:26
Well, you know, again, the family thing is, you know, it’s been kind of a journey, as we love to say, but it has and as that last little piece of like the sibling piece and the resentments that I might have had, carried all these years. And I’m just starting, I’ve worked at it in pieces all along the way. And this is kind of the last little piece. So, I’m really appreciative to that we had this discussion, because this is all kind of new territory for me and my relationship with my family and my siblings. And we still love to put out this image. And I’m like, I’m so uncomfortable with that now, but I got to power through that. I want to see what’s on the other side. I don’t want to be that false kind of thing anymore. So.
Margaret 19:09
And the beauty of recovery, it affords us the ability to not have to be that we can’t change anyone in our family on whether they’re not going to do it or do it. And that’s the leverage that I think a lot of family members really want to believe will happen. If I get in recovery. Everyone around me will start seeing it, wanting it and changing it. And I think we have to accept that is not always the case. But it doesn’t have to change the improvement and restoration our relationships get through recovery.
Tom Farley 19:36
Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
Margaret 19:40
But it is tough because you love someone you want them to have what you have.
Tom Farley 19:43
Well, we all create what these relationships should look like and are supposed to look like and supposed to feel like, but a lot of times they’re not in the sooner you can get to, away from what I want it to look like to this is what it is. And this is where, start here. Don’t start from the, you know, from the other end of the spectrum. You know, like I said to, said this the other day in a meeting, I said, one of the things I clung to early on in recovery is the saying of actions before results. And I spent my whole life with this result in mind, this is where I should be, this is the job I should have, the house I should have. These are how my relationships should be always looking at the results, not doing any of the actions. And now just doing the actions produce the results that are because they’re from my actions, and the results are what the results are. And so even in relationships is, this is the actions I can do. And whatever relationship that produces with my family or anyone else, that’s what it is.
Margaret 20:53
The outcome is not up to us.
Tom Farley 20:55
It’s not up to us. And you should be very proud of the actions and the work you’re doing. Because if you’re doing all you can, you got to feel really good about that. And whatever the reward is, it’s rewarding.
Margaret 21:08
Well and I think you say it well, when you describe your relationship examples in your story. They may not be what I thought or believed they should be. But they’re so good.
Tom Farley: Yeah.
Margaret: Yeah, that’s huge. And I think that one of the goals of recovery on the family side, and I think on all sides of recovery, is letting go of those expectations of what this should be, ought to be needs to be. And just work on what I feel is healthiest for me, the rest will fall into place. And
Tom Farley 21:38
And you can’t build a relationship foundation on expectations or false. But you can build it on the smallest little thing that you’ve created yourself, this authentic relationship. It doesn’t have to stay that way. But that’s what it is. And it makes you feel certainly much better. There’s possibility I can grow and but it’s going to grow in its own way. Because it’s on that solid foundation that you built the to go from there.
Margaret 22:06
So, I had one last question that I meant to ask earlier that I really want to know, one of the things that I am a passionate fighter for is more services for family. Because we are underserved. The people who have the illness, get treatment thrown at them, therapy thrown at them, resources thrown at them, Grant at some don’t get the amount they need, but we do a lot more for them than we do for family. So, when you look at the evolution of your journey around, Chris will pick Chris for this one. Were you ever in a family program? asked to go to family program, involved in family therapy, taught around the family disease? Was that part of the journey of him getting help?
Tom Farley 22:47
No way. That we’re Irish, we didn’t do those things. Not at all.
Margaret 22:53
So, you didn’t do them. But were you offered them?
Tom Farley 22:55
No, it was Chris’s problem. And even with my parents that are like to the rest of siblings, like we’ve got this, you know, you don’t have to worry about this. We’re gonna take care of Chris. When I was in New York and you know, an adult, and he was going to all these treatments. I’m like, What are you doing with Chris? And like, just don’t worry about him.
Margaret 23:12
So you weren’t extended offers to go to anything do any?
Tom Farley: Nope.
Margaret: Wow.
Tom Farley 23:17
But then, in my own family, we started to do family therapy and wasn’t pretty.
Margaret 23:23
In your marital family.
Tom Farley: Yeah, yeah.
Margaret: Yeah, I hear you. I hear that you in the family of origin around Chris didn’t get that opportunity for education or exposure. But in your family when it came to stuff happening, you sought services?
Tom Farley 23:37
Yes, absolutely.
Margaret 23:41
And your mom did too, for her. Albeit different ones. Maybe then, I just think it’s important to just like, do you think it could have helped you navigate your family of origins journey with Chris to have had an understanding of the disease of addiction and some education around it?
Tom Farley 24:00
Yeah, it certainly would have helped. But I think more importantly, we created this kind of this is our brand,
Margaret: Right?
Tom Farley: And it’s what we’re putting out and any problem, you know, it’s an individual’s problem. Again, I’ve talked so much about connection, there was no ensemble feeling about it. Families have to exist as an ensemble, and you have to really look at them where everyone has strengths and weaknesses, both. And when I see families struggle, what I see is this disintegration of the ensemble, the connection, there is no you know, it’s all superficial. There’s no working on communication, and there’s this feeling of trust and acceptance, right. Ask any family, individual members, do you feel trusted and accepted in your own family? I bet a lot of sources say Not really. I have a roof over my head, and I feel protected. It’s not the same thing.
Margaret 25:01
Hmm, you make a good point, one of my favorite evolutions from working in a treatment center, to working on my own, in my own business with embrace family recovery was the privilege of coaching an entire family. I had like the Brady Bunch on my screen. And what was so amazing, I had the parents and all the sibs of the identified person, like, unbelievable. And they showed up. And we sat in our little zoom Brady Bunch screens, and I thought, my God, the trajectory of change in the family system, even if it got hot, even if it was difficult to show up, to stay consistent to be willing, even though it’s awkward to take risks, to discuss, to have space, all that stuff. All because one person went to a treatment center and was given by the family support an opportunity to do that. And then thankfully, the family then said, we need some help too. So, we’re on the same page so we can have support and conversation. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. And I just wish that for more families. I’m not saying through me, but I don’t care where right like that’s your all journey. But I wish more family could have that opportunity.
Tom Farley 26:21
Well, I went to a racial justice summit in that year of 2020, the turmoil that we had, and I said, and I got to kind of like I do have meetings just show up, and shut up, and just listen. And I went and the first day, the last speaker said, I’m gonna send you home and do homework, I want you to go home and identify where in your life do you experience deep belonging. And I know his point was some people in our societies that don’t feel that anywhere.
So, I went home, and I’m like, alright, where is it? In the first thing? I thought it was like, Is it my family? And like, no, it’s not, I don’t feel deep belonging, the only thing I did was it my company, was at my alumni from college group, the only thing I had come up with was my recovery community, where I would walk in and and I feel deep belonging every day, that feeling that I never felt in my family, that level. And that’s what I wish I would have had.
And again, when I go into my recovery community, like, these are my best friends. These aren’t the people I hang out with. But I feel it deep belonging, I wouldn’t love that with my family, like, we’re all different. But we should all have that trust,
Margaret: and acceptance,
Tom Farley: acceptance and feeling that I deeply belong in this family. If nowhere else in the world, this is where I belong. I mean, that’s where it should start.
Margaret 27:51
So, I’m gonna say my summation of that, because I think it’s a great way to leave this. And I would love your two cents, my wish for, my desire for people in families impacted by this disease, that though the disease causes so much pain and destruction, and fear, and trauma. That we could all have a way to connect through recoveries in our own places that would bring a deeper sense of belonging within the family unit.
Tom Farley 28:25
I love that. And the thing that holds us back is this notion that life has got to be easy, and fun, and wonderful. I tell people getting in recovery that like, we look at this gate, and like everything beyond it, like oh, my life’s gonna change blah, blah, blah. And we don’t make that last step because there’s so much fear, and doubt. And what I tell people is on the other side of that doorway, that gate is the same fear it’s life, you’re not avoiding anything, but we avoid so much pain, but I tell them what is on the other side is life does get better, and it never gets better on the other side.
So, you’re not avoiding anything, power through that pain and doubt. And I think a lot of family’s kind of have that fear, that mistrust of each other. Just there’s so many layers of that stuff that, to get beyond that is just, it’s just, that’s a goal, that’s for sure.
Margaret 29:22
Absolutely. And a day at a time it’s possible.
Tom Farley: Yeah,
Margaret: You know, one of the most humbling realities and I don’t know if you can relate to this Tom, but was for me, smacked me in the face hard and fast. was when I was in recovery. I’m back in my Bermuda my home of origin, my family of origin, all the stuffs going on. Relationships are better and I’m the only one who’s changed.
Tom Farley: Wow,
Margaret: That means I, my disease, me contributed to the mayhem which I can’t deny. And I don’t need others to change to feel more okay in my family of origin because I have to work on that.
Tom Farley 30:00
Yeah, but I’ve totally believed that that everyone else has to make my life better and that the change got me nowhere.
Margaret 30:06
That’s addict thinking and it’s finest.
Tom Farley 30:10
Totally, like flipping that around has changed everything for me. Everything for me,
Margaret 30:16
Amen. Agreed. And it’s so counterintuitive to the way that I survived in the world before.
Tom Farley 30:22
Yeah, oh my gosh
Outro: Thank you, Tom. Thank you for being so open and generous while sharing your story and the Farley family story. Your mom blazed a trail, and I loved hearing how Chris has been such a big part of your ongoing recovery.
Come back next week, where I have the privilege of introducing you to Geoffrey Golia, the former director of New York Center for Living which is a treatment center that focuses on working with young people and teenagers ages 13 through 30 dealing with substance use disorder and mental health issues.
I am aware that we do a lot of work around adults impacted by the disease of addiction and their loved ones, and I felt like it was important to get the voice of someone who had the expertise of working with people who were younger because it often starts younger. So I had the privilege of hearing Geoffrey speak in a training and found him a really good teacher so I’m excited to introduce you to him next week.
Margaret 30:56
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability and sharing parts of their story. Please find resources on my website,
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time, please take care of you!
