The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss

by Anderson Cooper

Though she is a survivor, she has none of the toughness that word usually carries with it. She is the strongest person I know, but tough, she is not. She has never allowed herself to develop a protective layer of thick skin. She’s chosen to remain vulnerable, open to new experiences and possibilities, and because of that, she is the most youthful person I know.

She sees her past in perspective. The little things that once seemed important to her no longer are. She has clarity about her life that I am only beginning to have about mine.

I called her to let her know I was leaving, waiting until the last minute as usual because I never want her to worry.

When we’re young we all waste so much time being reserved or embarrassed with our parents, resenting them or wishing they and we were entirely different people.

Health is your most treasured gift. As long as you have it, you are independent, master of yourself. Illness grabs the soul. You plunge in and out of hope, fearing you will never recover. All that I have been, all that I am, all that I might become no longer exist. I am alone. Nothing can distract from the truth of this finality.

“YOU DON’T GROW UP MISSING WHAT YOU NEVER HAD, BUT THROUGHOUT LIFE THERE IS HOVERING OVER YOU AN INESCAPABLE LONGING FOR SOMETHING YOU NEVER HAD.” —Susan Sontag

After my father’s death, I retreated into myself, and when I emerged, I had changed. I was more quiet, and serious. I’d become an observer of the world around me instead of a participant in it. Nothing has ever felt safe since.

“I suspect that being fatherless leaves a woman with a taste for the fanatical, having grown unsheltered, having never seen in the familiar flesh the embodiment of the ancient image of authority, a fatherless girl can be satisfied only with the heroic, the desperate, the extreme. A fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing safe.”

it’s why I so enjoy the confidence that age and experience bring.

This is a terrible flaw that you, Anderson, thank God, do not have. From birth, you have been cherished and adored. Even as an adult, the need to please others coursed through my veins. Pleasing a person flooded me with warmth, which made me feel successful, and momentarily safe. But it never lasted.

Trying to please everyone all the time never works. It leads to hating oneself and then hating oneself even more when one later tries to assert one’s authority.

For more than two decades now, I’ve moved constantly from one place to another, one story to the next, never allowing myself to slow down for long. I’ve worried that if I become too self-reflective or too mired in the pain of the past, the losses of Carter and Daddy, I will no longer be able to function, no longer be able to breathe.

I don’t think you really see yourself as a shark. It is not in your nature. If it were, you would be a businessman or a lawyer or in some other profession where ruthlessness and cunning are required. You are a storyteller, and though you may wish at times that you didn’t feel pain, the fact that you continually put yourself in situations where you will, and where you can help others feel as well, speaks volumes about who and what you really are.

I no longer puzzle over why, throughout my life, I have left men who loved me and whom I loved in return. Nothing ever felt safe, and though it was unfair of me, it felt wiser to abandon them before they abandoned me.

you’ve never let others define who you are or what you care about. The first time you told me that you didn’t read anything about yourself, I thought it strange, but now I understand why you don’t. I’m guessing it was something you learned early on, after being written about in tabloids during the custody trial.

People revealing things they feel at the moment that can’t ever

be taken back—a lot of people are going to regret the things they’ve said.

I have never let myself dwell on other people’s opinions of me. Perhaps they thought I was dabbling in acting, painting, or writing, but it doesn’t touch me. If that is what they think, so be it. You can never change their minds, so why waste time trying? Why agonize over it? Better to concentrate on more important things.

Also I think it’s important for me professionally to be open to criticism. I still have a lot to learn, and want to get better at what I do. I don’t ever want to feel too comfortable in my career.

think there is a difference between being open to constructive criticism and letting jealous strangers say cruel things to you that make you feel bad about yourself.

I wanted to correct the mistakes my mother made with me, but I didn’t know how. I read books on parenting, but none gave me the answers I was seeking. I fantasized about creating a large family, but my dreams were simplistic, and I kept reaching out blindly for some kind of road map to follow.

It is in my nature to be romantic, and for me that meant falling in love with someone strong, tall, and handsome; someone to look up to, who adored me, and who would take care of me while I doted on them.

If you can see your patterns of behavior, and you can understand the motivations behind your actions or emotions, it can help tremendously.

I was born with an appetite for life, a romantic readiness, and I’ve rushed to greet life with an open heart. I still have it. It is the key to everything. Because of this, no matter how difficult some of my experiences have been, they have not hardened me or made me tough.

From the time we were little, you treated us as if our ideas mattered. You and Daddy encouraged us to form our own opinions, and listened when we expressed them. We were not just children in your eyes; we were people who deserved respect. That was a powerful lesson.

So much of our adult lives is influenced by what happened to us as children. It is all still there, the memories, the feelings, and fears, stored just beneath the surface in the hidden crannies of our cortex.

I find looking backward too painful; there is no reinventing the past for me.

I remember, particularly in my younger years, there were many times I wished I had never been born. But soldier on, I promise those moments will pass.

Spend a lot of time with him. Travel with him. Traveling together is the best way to get to know a person. Also, fall in love with someone your age or close to it, someone with the same values and with whom you can communicate on every level. Don’t edit your thoughts, feelings, and values to please someone else; express them as they truly are. This is really important and, alas, one of my great failings. Great sex is, of course, a top priority. Over the long haul it comes and goes, goes and comes, but hang in there. Make every effort to remain faithful; it will make you happier than you already are. Oh, and marry someone who makes you laugh. This is perhaps most important of all.

Love and trust are my truths. They rarely fail, except when I don’t listen to my instincts.

When you do finally meet your love, honestly confide in him. Hold nothing back. Not only the high hopes you have, but also the dark fear that you may not be capable of taking responsibility for another person’s happiness. Show each other that you not only love but also respect each other. Define your values, but know that you both must be willing to compromise. Believe that the life you create together is the top priority and you will do all you can to make it work.

Ian Maclaren. “Be kind,” he wrote, “for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” You may not be able to see the battle others are fighting, and you may believe they are confident and have never known sadness or fear, but believe me, they have, so be kind.

Someone recently said to me that it is easier to be clever than it is to be kind, and I think that is very true.

In every life, you have moments of blinding beauty and happiness, and then you land in a dark cave and there is no color, no sky. Then the rainbow returns, sometimes only briefly, but it always does come back. You have to believe that it will, even in the darkest of times. That belief is what is really important.

The advantage of being trusting is you don’t harden, which I admire. I don’t like hard people. By remaining open, you live in a way that’s more productive. The risk is that you can lose everything, and I have at times, or nearly everything.

It is in my nature to trust with an open heart, my gut instinct the only compass I follow. At times it is right on the mark; at other times, far off it. I do now know the world, the good and the bad, and I would rather greet it with open arms; it is worth the hurt, the sting of loss or betrayal. Yes, worth it all. Hope is essential. The alternative is to stop living.

But I believe there are many kinds of success: happiness with one’s work, the feeling that you are making an important contribution, helping people in one way or another, creating something that speaks to you or to others, loving someone who loves you, creating honest relationships, giving of yourself to someone and getting something back. It is very easy simply to define yourself by your job, your title, your salary, but these rarely give you long-term feelings of success and happiness.

Success and the money it brings are a great high, but the greatest high of all and the most difficult to achieve is a happy family life. Consider making a loving partner and a family your true foundation of success.

after my brother killed himself we were faced with the dilemma of oncoming holidays and how we would get through them. Neither of us wanted to observe Thanksgiving or Christmas, or any other kind of day requiring a celebration. When you are grieving, the holidays, with their cards and constant commercials, remind you of the holes in your heart and all that you have lost. So after my brother’s death, we once again returned to the movies, and that is how we got through holidays for several years. No tree on Christmas, no turkey on Thanksgiving, no exchange of presents—just the other’s company in a darkened theater waiting to be transported for a few hours to another world.