March 19, 2024 • 35 mins
In today's episode, Laura chats with author Emily P. Freeman about endings, and in particular determining how and when to leave a situation that no longer fits.
Emily's new March 2024 release is How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away, available wherever books are sold.
In the Q&A, Sarah and Laura discuss their experiences in coming back from recent injuries.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome to best of both worlds, This says Laura. This
episode is airing in mid March of twenty twenty four.
(00:47):
I am going to be interviewing Emily P. Freeman about
her new book How to Walk into a Room, which
is not really about how to walk into our room.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
It's about knowing when.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It is time to move on from one chapter of
life to another. And so this book is a lot
about endings, and so it's an interesting question because we
don't always know that something is ending, and I think
people in general don't handle endings necessarily as well as
we could, or as mindfully as we could, and so
that's a topic we talk about.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
A lot in this interview.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So Sarah, have you had a last time for something
that you didn't actually know was an ending at the time.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I would say a lot of the stuff I did
towards the end of my program director journey through a
lot of last times that I may not have really
like thought about we're going to be last times, not
that the end was so abrupt. I guess maybe I
did maybe have some awareness, but I didn't really think
of the poignancy of what that really meant, like the
last time I interviewed candidates, or the last time I
ran a faculty meeting or something like that. And you know,
(01:49):
it's interesting. I don't think I'm someone who does super
well with endings in general. I don't mind moving on
to things, and I'm certainly I don't shy away from
quitting things that are working. I feel like that's actually
a strength of mind. But when it comes to ceremoniously
like acknowledging the closing of something, I think it's something
I need to work on. So I'm excited for this interview.
(02:10):
What about you?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, I was thinking about a couple indings that I
didn't necessarily know were endings at the time. My parents
had you know, I lived with them in South be
In Indiana for a couple of years, and then they
were there for about twenty years after I left, and
I went to go stay in their house with them
one night and a couple of years ago, and it
turned out then a couple of months after that that
(02:33):
they decided to sell the house and retire and move
out to the East Coast. So that was certainly the
last time I will ever be in that house. I mean,
I may not wind up in South Bend, Indiana for
any particular reason. I mean, there's no real reason to
go there if they are not there, and it's not
the kind of place you just wind up necessarily passing through.
So that's kind of crazy to think too that I
(02:54):
might who knows if I'll ever be there again, but
certainly I will probably not be in that house that
I spent a great many nights in in the course
of my life. Where else to thinking of this? So
sometimes you think things are the end and they're not
than they are. And then with nursing babies, So if
anyone I don't know, some people have read my newsletters
(03:15):
for a long long time, and I had mentioned something
about it being a last time for I thought in
it was probably March or April of twenty sixteen. Then
baby Alex, who was you know, about fifteen months at
the time, is the last time I've been nursing a baby.
I was like, oh, that's the end of a chapter
of my life. But of course, haha. Then we decided
(03:36):
to have another baby, so is in it for several
more years since it turns out that this particular baby
was way into it, so that took longer to end
that journey than I thought. But there has, in fact
now been a last time for nursing a baby.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It's about that time. It's definitely time.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, And sometimes it's true you don't know when the
end is going to be. And reflecting back on that,
I'm not sure I knew my last time with Cameron
was giving me my last time because he was my
child who like just one day was like I'm not
doing this, Like you don't know that's coming necessarily. Maybe
there are some signs and that can be really heartbreaking.
But then at the same time, maybe it's better not
to know that it's the last time, because again, I
(04:14):
don't like endings, so maybe that's.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
A good thing. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I had
more of a sense of that.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Finally, with this the fifth baby is like, okay, the
last time for various things with babyhood. But you know
the thing about having five kids, as you're probably ready
by the end of the fifth kid to have that
be the last time you potty train a child, for instance,
I'm kind of a thankless task. All right, Well, let's
hear what Emily has to say about endings and how
we can be a little bit more mindful about them.
(04:40):
So Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Emily P.
Freeman to the program. So, Emily, could you introduce yourself
to our listeners.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
I would love to. It's so great to be here
with you today. Well, I am joining you from North Carolina,
where I live with my husband John. We've been together
twenty two years and we have three kids, twins who
are twenty one seventeen, so we've lived the whole life
together of navigating. We've almost made it through the teen years,
which has been great. But I'm an author, I'm a
(05:08):
podcast host. I have a podcast called The Next Right Thing,
where I help people who experience decision fatigue and chronic
hesitation discern their next right thing. In faith, work in.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Life awesome, awesome, And so of course we're here talking
about Emily's new book which is called How to Walk.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Into a Room.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
But we are not literally walking into any rooms with
you know, Pizaz or anything like that. It's more of
an allegorical sort of thing. So maybe you can explain
explain the metaphor for us.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Sure, I had a nine year old say, well that's easy. Watch,
I'll do it right now, I can open the door.
Watch get me doing it, which I love that, you know.
The idea really is that if life were a house,
then every room holds a story. And I think we
all understand what it's like to walk into a literal
room and feel like, yeah, this is a room where
I belong, This is my room, this is my place.
We also understand the physical feeling of walking into a
(06:01):
room where you're like, this is not my place. I
do not belong here. But really, the question that I'm
positing in this book is the question of what do
you do when a room that you're in is no
longer a room where you belong? What do I do
when I'm having to discern, oh, this was my place
vocationally or connection wise or friend group wise or volunteer
(06:23):
work wise, and then you begin to realize, oh, something
has shifted either in the room, in the people around me,
or in myself, and I need to discern, Okay, what
do I do? How do I leave this place? Is
it time to leave this place? And what am I
going to do next? So, because that's where I have
found in conversations with people about decision making, where we
(06:45):
feel the most stuck is when we're considering leaving a space,
especially one that we either fought really hard to get
to or means a whole lot to us.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Absolutely, I mean, I find this concept of endings fascinating
because everyone knows there's a beginning to something. I mean,
you start something, you come up with new ideas, you
plunge into things. But everything also has an end, right, Like,
everything is going to end at some point, whether it's
that eternal weekly staff meeting, like there's going to be
(07:15):
a Tuesday where there isn't a staff meeting, or probably
before that, a time you were not leading it or
whatever it is, but there's going to be a Tuesday
without it. Right, you know, there's an end to absolutely,
I mean, I mean, do people really think about that?
I mean, as you study decision making, I mean, do
people go into most things knowing there is going to
be an end or even thinking about that.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
It's such a great point because I think we often
think when something ends, we're surprised by it. We feel
like we have made wrong choices. We feel like maybe
I've wasted my time and maybe I'm doing something wrong
or I've done something wrong, when in reality, things ending
is the normal, healthy human rhythm of life. But because
(07:58):
we expect that if I'm doing if I've made the
right choice to begin with, and if I'm doing the
right things in the room, then nothing will ever change.
And I think that's the thing that we need to
shift our narrative about, because the reality is, for one thing,
just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have
to do it forever. And I think sometimes we think like, oh,
but I went to college for this job and I
(08:19):
am really good at it, and people would kill to
have this position, So who am I. We start to
have like labels on ourselves, like I must be selfish,
I must be an idiot, I must not know what
I'm doing. If I'm considering walking away from this thing
or considering trying something new where I have to God
forbid be a beginner again. And so I think a
(08:41):
big part of our work is to begin to change
our narrative about what it means to be successful, what
it means that this place worked for me. Because the
reality is, if you were in a job for five
ten years and you start to sense a change, it
doesn't mean you wasted five or ten years of your life.
It means you lived those five or ten years and
now something has changed and it's time to do something else.
But it doesn't have to mean something about me as
(09:03):
a human person. It doesn't have to be an identity thing.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, I mean, because I guess that's the that falls in.
You know, we need to be better about dealing with me.
Called the chosen endings in life. You know that you
talk about how there are anticipated endings. I mean, you
kind of hope your kids will graduate from high school
at some point and go on to whatever the next
thing is for them. There's the forced endings, which seem
unfortunate sometimes but it happens, you know, you lose a
(09:28):
job or whatever else. It's you know, these things happen.
It's the chosen endings that are the complicated ones.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
They're the ones where we have to decide to stay
or go, and sometimes we would rather someone else decide
it for us. Unfortunately, we can't most of the time
delegate our decision making when it comes to our own lives.
We thankfully have choice, but sometimes that makes it complicated
because we want to make so desperately. We want to
make the right one, and we're afraid we're going to
(09:56):
mess it all up.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, no, I've ever heard that from people like a
They were actually kind of relieved to be laid off
or whatever it is that you know, because they were
on their way out, but this made the decision for them.
In your book, you talk about the fact that you
moved a lot as a kid, and I wonder if
that has contributed to your sense of understanding that things
(10:18):
end in a way that I think some people don't.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
It's interesting you say that, because I don't know that
I have fully put that together, but I think you
might be right. My dad was in a We moved
a lot when I was a kid. He was a
disc jockey on the radio, which is so funny. People like, oh,
was you were you in the military. It was your
dad in the military. No, he was in radio, but
it did.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
You had to go as often for radio we did
the military.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
And you move around, and so I do think that
afforded me a worldview that understood that if you want
to make friends here, you better do it quickly because
this isn't going to last forever. And in some ways
that's really sad to think of. But in another way,
it was a character building exercise as a kid that
I didn't even know because I got to meet a
(11:01):
lot of different people and I got to learn that
this thing can be good for as long as it's good,
and also if it's terrible, it won't last forever. And
so I think I've experienced that as a kid. I
would not have articulated it that way. In contrast, my
husband John, he was born in, grew up in, and
we still live in his hometown. So when we talk about,
(11:23):
you know, there have been times in when you have
twenty years together, there's times when you think about, like
what if we were to move or go to this
other place. We haven't done it yet. We've moved houses,
but not towns, and our conversation is really different. His
way of thinking about making a change is different than mine.
I see such value now, like being in one place
and having roots and our kids are in one place.
(11:44):
He sort of has more of like whoa would it
be like to be someplace else? And I think it's
really important to recognize and to know about ourselves what
our own narratives of staying and leaving are, because they're
going to inform all of the decisions we make.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
then we'll be back talking about some specific endings that
have happened in your life that maybe you can share
how you made those decisions. Well, I am back interviewing
(12:23):
Emily P. Freeman, who is the author of the brand
new book how to Walk into a Room Again, not
literally walking into a room, We hope you figured that
out a few years ago, but how we make decisions
about making big changes in our lives, and particularly as
we're talking about today, how we know whether.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
To end things.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Earlier, you mentioned if you're in a room that you've
perhaps fought for, or helped create, or anything like that,
it can be particularly challenging to figure out that it
might be time to end things. And you talk about
two experiences that you have had with ending things that
I'd like to talk on both of them. One was
(13:03):
ending your involvement in a business that you had helped start,
So maybe you can talk a little bit about that
and what led to your decision to end there and
how you made that choice.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
We started this business seven eight years ago, and it
was an online company for writers to help writers kind
of figure out that they had a voice and to
maybe if they wanted to get published, to help them
understand what that looks like. And so it was all
about balancing the art of writing the business of publishing.
But it started out, as sometimes these things do, as
a hobby. It was sort of like a side thing.
(13:35):
We made a little money, but over time, specifically during
the COVID years, that hobby grew into a full time gig.
And it was surprising. It was a gift. But before
I knew it, this thing that I had started on
the side and was really happy about and loved and enjoyed,
and there were hard parts about it, but as all
things go, but now it became kind of front and center,
(13:58):
and I went from sort of being like a creative
and being able to express myself as a writer to
helping other people express themselves as writers to then managing
a team who could help the people. So I went
from sort of being the maker to being more of
a manager. And I don't know if you've read Paul
Graham's essay about maker time and manager time, but I
recognized very quickly that manager time is not the way
(14:21):
I roll, and so that was a big contributor to
me understanding and recognizing, like, my days are probably numbered
in this type of business. But much like you know
I talk about in endings all the time, we really
want for our endings to line up with like it's
time to go and I feel ready, And those are
(14:43):
wonderful times when that happens. But the reality is most
of us live in the gap in between, which is
I'm ready to go, but it's not time. And that's
where I found myself with this business decision. And there
were lots of things involved, but the bottom line is
I was ready to go about three years before I
was able to go, and so there was a a
lot of things that had to happen in those three years.
It was a wonderful character building time of learning patience.
(15:06):
If the opposite is true for you, where it's time
to go, but you're not ready. That can be a
great time to build courage where you're having to step
forward into something even though you don't feel ready at all.
And so I ended up about a year or so ago,
sold my shares in that company and was able to
end end things there. And it was bittersweet. There were
hard parts that I was glad to leave behind, but
(15:29):
there were really lovely parts and lovely people that I
was sad to leave behind. But again, it doesn't mean
that I chose wrong or that it was wrong to
go into that business. It was just there was a
time for it, and then that time came to an end.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Well. I like how you have that rubric there that
it's like you can be ready, but the change is
not ready to happen. Right. It could also be that
people are ready for you to move on and you
are not quite ready.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
For that as well.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I mean, I wonder how you can discern if it's,
you know, if you are pushing things for it, if
it's that it's not ready, or that something like the
is going on, you know that where maybe you're just
procrastinating on pushing this forward.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Right, listen, procrastination as a whole. Could we write a
whole book about that. We could. We could, But I
think there are some questions that you can ask yourself.
I mean, when I was considering not only that the
business space, but other spaces in my life, if is
it time for me to make a change? And how
can I know for sure? And a few questions I
asked myself were one, are there corners, sections, people, or
(16:28):
parts of this room that I'm avoiding? In other words,
am I hesitant to turn the lights all the way on?
Are there things that I'm like turning a blind eye
to that I don't want to look at? And what
would happen if I did look directly at them? That's
one piece of information. Another one asking myself, is anyone
or anything missing from this room? And if so, who
(16:49):
or what? And recognizing that doesn't mean that if there
are people missing or things missing, you got to get
out of there. No, it's just a bit of information
to recognize who belongs here, who doesn't belong here, who
has already left this space, who's walking into this space?
And these are more pieces of information. A final question
(17:09):
you can ask yourself when you're thinking about the rooms
of your life if it might be time or not
is to what extent can I be myself here? And
this can be true not just for a job or
a faith community you're a part of, or a volunteer position.
It can also be true in a relationship. So, for example,
do you have to change yourself to such a degree
that you don't even recognize yourself in order to inhabit
(17:31):
this room? Or if people who know and love you
show up when you're with this person or in this space,
would they recognize you? Would they see a version of
you that they know and can support and get behind,
or are they like, are you feeling like you're constantly
having to censor yourself or edit yourself or muffle your
(17:51):
own ideas or opinions? Those are just the more you
answer and look at some of those questions, And there's
ten of them that I share that are good to
think about. That can give you again, it's not a
yes or no, but it can give you some arrows
to know that you're moving in a direction of either
walking towards the door or maybe staying in this space,
but maybe making some changes along the way.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, well, what do you mean about that? That you
should yield to the arrows rather than obsessing over answers.
I guess the idea is that maybe you don't have
to make a decision about ending or not ending immediately,
but there are things you can kind of pay attention
to along the way.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Sometimes when we recognize that we feel just sort of
a general sense of stuckness or like a discomfort a
lot of us, what we want to do is I
feel uncomfortable, I don't like it, I need to make
a change. And sometimes that's true, but I would venture
to say a lot of times that's a little premature.
(18:49):
Is that the first sign of discomfort is a time
to begin to pay attention, ask yourself some questions, and
to begin to look for arrows. What we want is
a final answer I'm uncomfortable, solve it. What's the decision
I need to make? But I would love to begin
to encourage us and myself included, to slow our role
(19:11):
a little bit and to begin to enter into what
is more a process of discernment, which is, rather than
looking for I have a question I need an answer yesterday,
is to enter into I have a question, what is
maybe an arrow to one next right thing that I
can do today? And I might not know the final
answer I might have to follow three, five, ten arrows
(19:33):
before I get to my final decision. But to know
that's a healthy process of decision making. And when you
make your decisions that way, if you're afforded the time
to do it, when you make that decision, you do
it more wholeheartedly. You do it from a place of
more confidence, so that five months from now, if things
are really hard again, you're not wondering, like so much,
(19:56):
did I make the wrong decisions? Like No, I took
my time and I did what I could, and I
I followed the arrows the best I knew how So
it can give you confidence not just for now, but
for later too.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, and to make sure that you're ending the right thing.
I mean, I think when we get upset sometimes and
feel stuck, we might think that everything in life needs
to change, or the most obvious thing needs to change,
as opposed to I don't know something else that you
haven't even thought of. So with that, I wonder if
you could talk a little bit about the other change
(20:25):
I mentioned earlier, the ending that was a church you
helped found, so that you and your husband helped start
a church, and then you decided at some point along
the way that you needed to leave that. It sounds
like that was even more fraught for you than the
business decision.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
It was, well, we didn't actually help start the church,
but we were a part of the church when they
were moving into a new building, and so we were
kind of really a part of getting that going. And
it was a real community thing, you know, joining in
it was our place, you know, and I think we
all understand what it's like to be part of a
community where you walk in and most people know who
(21:01):
you are, your kids have grown up there. If you're sick,
people bring you meals.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
It's a place where we spent our time, where we
gave money and when it was appropriate to do so,
and where we just generally enjoyed being. And you know,
when that's connected to something deeply rooted in you, like
your faith, then that's even another layer of connection in
a space. And so this was a space that we
felt really close to and was a really meaningful place
(21:28):
for us. But as these things go, this was not
an overnight decision. You know, this was a place that
we loved, but also there were questions that we had
there and looking back, you know, it was maybe a
two or three year process really of asking ourselves questions
like are the stakes too high for us to stay?
And sort of once the stakes of for us staying
(21:50):
felt like they outweighed the risk of leaving, that's when
we decided to kindly finally make that change. But again,
that was one that was following a lot of arrows
on the way out because the stakes were so high,
because we were so rooted in this community. And that
is not a lighthearted decision that we made. And it's one, honestly,
(22:10):
four years later, that we're still wrestling with, not whether
or not we made the right choice. I believe that
we did for us at the time, but just wrestling
to find and look for what does it look like
to find community? Now? What does it look like to
belong to a new faith community? And we're doing that slowly,
but man, it's that process is a lot slower than
I would prefer, honestly.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, well, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean, it sounds like we have to understand that
with endings, with decisions, there's going to be some regret
either way.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I mean, so if you're hoping for a regret free decision,
you should probably rethink that.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Yes, that's an excellent point.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
So you're going to write either way, it's always going
to be hard. Although one thing I found fascinating and
when you're in the process of this discernment, figuring out,
you know, following the errors do I say, do I.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Go, you began writing haiku.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
So let's talk about the important of sort of regular
daily rituals as you are trying to make decisions about
your life.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Rituals can be so kind. I grew up in a
self inflicted kind of rigorous way of life, like kind
of gave myself rules and if I didn't follow them,
I felt terrible about it. But that's not really what
I mean by ritual here. Really, it's just any type
of rhythm that you can engage that helps you be
more fully yourself. And sometimes, you know, some of the things,
(23:27):
especially in endings, when things end, some of the things
that we reach for that used to be familiar and
felt right. When something ends, some of our rituals and
rhythms changed too, and the things that maybe used to
feel right and that we used to enjoy, maybe they
don't feel so right anymore, maybe they don't feel like us.
And I just want to say that out loud, because
I think that's normal and good and when that happens,
(23:50):
if that happens, maybe it could be helpful to experiment
playfully with do rituals and rhythms and so one that
I did. You know, for me, I found it to
be hard. You know, prayer is a big part of
my life, but I found the way I used to
pray to be really different than the way that I
was wanting to engage that practice, and so instead I
started to write haiku. Now let me just be clear, Laura.
(24:12):
It was not like the traditional Japanese good God, it's
not good, but it was like what you learn in
like middle school or so seven syllable five And I
did it, and you know, I would put an and
or something in there to kind of make it work,
which is not what you're supposed to do. But you
know what, it was not for publishing. It was just
(24:32):
for me. It was just to kind of continue to
engage my own practice of expressing myself when long form
journaling was not accessible to me anymore at that time.
Just my brain wasn't working that way. But five seven
five I could do that, and I did. And let
me tell you, I mean I probably wrote one hundred
of them during that season of life, just you know,
going through and some of them, you know, when you
(24:53):
write a hundred, a few of them are good, most
of them are terrible. But I found it to be
a really just a way to may not take myself
so seriously during that time that was difficult. And now
I have I have a one hundred high coud ap.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Prove it, yeah, which you can do what you wish with.
At this point, well, I wanted to revisit one point
that you made it earlier, just that the ending does
not define the story that you're quote from the book.
So maybe you could just elaborate a little bit more
on that that just because something ended doesn't mean it
(25:26):
was the wrong thing, or that it was bad or.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Anything like that. It just ended.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
I think sometimes this is most clear in something like
job loss or maybe even a breakup, where you're like,
that was a terrible ending, like that, just it just
did not go the way I thought it would go.
It did not end the way I hoped it would end.
A lot of times we imagine the final episode of
(25:51):
our favorite sitcom and we think that's how my ending's
gonna go. It's gonna be a movie ending, and it
never almost never is. If you get it, cheers to you,
but most of us don't. I think the temptation, though,
is to paint the entire experience with the same hues
that happened at the end. And the reality is we
are whole people who live whole lives, and we can
(26:13):
appreciate the gifts of the experience even if it ended terribly.
We just can, and I think sometimes we have to,
and that's looking at the experience as a whole. We
may not be able to do that right away, and
I think that's important to notice, is that if you
have a terrible breakup, it just might have to be
terrible for a while, and that person has to be
(26:35):
a villain. But over time, I think we might understand
that none of us are all hero or all villain
and to help us become more wholeheartedly who we are.
I think it's good to reflect on our experiences for
what they were, both the beautiful and the difficult. But
the ending doesn't get to hijack the narrative. The ending
is a plot point, it's not the whole story.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah, now, that's good to now, I mean, especially with
things like relationship and people who have kids together, for instance.
I mean, if the relationship hadn't happened, you wouldn't have
these kids. But the relationship ended, it happened. You know,
you have to accept that good things can happen despite
maybe something not going well at the end. Well, speaking
(27:17):
of endings, we're coming up on the end of ours.
We always end our interviews with a love of the week,
so this is something that we are enjoying right now.
And since I'll go first, so you can think of
something to be you know, pop culture, food, book, whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And I'm going to go with given that you're talking
about haiku poetry rules.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I mean, longtime listeners know I'm writing a sonnet a week,
you know, two lines a day, so fourteen lines in
the course of a week, and been doing this for
a while.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
But what the reason I like it is the rules.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Make you think about it. But then it makes if
you could stick with the rules, it's like at least
kind of decent, right because it's done the rules, Whereas
if it's total free form, you know, there's a lot
more variability. I mean, it could be great, could also
be awful. So I like poetry rules, so I'm a
big fan of the haikup rules, even if we're not
doing the proper like Japanese walk off to think of
(28:12):
the thing that you know you're not saying that's off
there in the distance.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
How about you? What are you loving this week?
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Well? You ask this on the day after I just
finished speaking of the end of a series. I just
finished watching Ugly Betty. Okay, didn't see that coming, did you?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Now?
Speaker 4 (28:32):
I did not, but I missed it when it came
out originally, And so I just watched the series and
it's just such a delightful show. America Ferreira stars in it,
and she's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
She's great.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Yeah, she's so great. And so I was like, I
should watch that series, and I did, and I just
finished it and I'm nostalgic about it because it's over.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
There are no more, but there are no episodes coming out.
It really is truly over.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Well, now you just need to find the next thing, right,
That's what I need, the next right thing, exactly right?
All right? Well, Emily, thank you so much for joining us.
And why don't you tell our listeners where they can
find you?
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Oh, you can find almost everything at Emilypfreeman dot com.
It's my name. I also have the next writing podcast
we drop every Tuesday, and then on subsec I'm the
sole Minimalist.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Awesome. Well, we'll be sure to check that out. Thanks
so much for joining us, Emily.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
All right, Well we are back.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I was interviewing Emily P. Freeman about her book How
to Walk Into a Room. So, Sarah, this question, I
guess start for you, and I guess for me too.
This listener writes, can you share what it was like
coming back from an injury? So Sarah had a leg
injury this fall that precluded her running for a couple months,
(29:43):
but then she has now been back and as readers
and listeners know, she recently got a lifetime pr in
the half marathon, which is pretty awesome to do that
in your forties.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Many of us do not.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Get faster over time, so Sarah has defied time in
all sorts of ways. So we want to hear a
little bit about how she came back from that. And
he thought she had about that, and then the listener
asked how my back was doing. So I'll give a
one minute thing about that later, but let's hear about you, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, I was, I mean It was a rough couple
months there for listeners. I talked about it, but it
was a very unfortunate incident with me not putting my
car into park properly and then basically getting my leg
kind of like a crush injury underneath the door of
the car. Not a lot of fun, extensive bruising. I
thought I had torn my meniscus, but I didn't, so
there was There was actually no like.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Bad structural damage.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
It was just eight ton of like crazy amounts of
hematoma soft tissue damage like in my leg, and I
couldn't run for a while. It took me a really
long time to agree to that. I think trying to
make it work and then I would like fall and
make things worse, and was finally like, Okay, this isn't happening.
And I did just do nothing for a couple of weeks,
(30:57):
and then I realized that I think I could bike,
so we got a peloton. We rented a peloton, which
is something you can do, you don't have to purchase
one outright, and that actually was very helpful just to
give me an outlet. So I continued to do some
strength training that I felt like I was able to
do and I did biking, and I really didn't run
for a while. And you know, it's so funny because
(31:20):
it felt like such a long time while it was happening,
especially because I was so used to running this very steady,
high mileage. It just felt like my life just felt different,
and I was very unhappy about it. Once I found
the biking, that was like, Okay, this actually works. This
is like a really nice substitute. And now looking back,
I'm like, that was such a blip, like it was nothing,
because I mean it wasn't nothing. It was about two months.
(31:43):
But by the end of December I was running really well.
We had taken a trip to a Millia Island and
I was like, oh, I'm back, Like I just felt
really good, and January was great training and I can
honestly say one thing that made me so sad was
I just felt like I was making this great progress
around doctor over right when I got hurt. But I
now feel like I'm actually even like in better speed
(32:05):
wise shape than I was back then, So we're resilient.
We can come back. And I guess the thing I
would say is like, don't try to rush it, and
definitely seek out the types of support that feel right,
whether that's physical therapy, whether that's actual therapy, whether that's
talking to friends, and just don't try to rush it,
because like this idea that you're just going to like
(32:26):
lose all your fitness in five minutes is just not true.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
We can come back.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, sometimes we think our endings are not in fact endings,
that it was not the end of her running journey.
That I keep coming back to this idea that time
is the secret ingredient in all sorts of things. As
this is airing, I'm about two months out from when
I had my back incident slash leg incident that basically
left me bedbound and my pretty standard run of the
(32:51):
mill aging person bulging discs pressing down on nerves and
rendering life undoable for a while. And you know, I
took my steroids and painkillers and stayed immobile pretty much
until I could start moving. But it's fascinating to watch
you just you do, in fact, often keep getting better
(33:13):
just through time, right if you're not doing things to
make it worse, and you're trying to slowly develop new
abilities that you had before. And so I've been kind
of fascinated to watch that. Although it has been very
frustrating in its own way. I'm still not running. I mean,
maybe when this airs I will be. This is late
February when we're recording it. We're in a hotel room
together in Naples. Sarah ran this morning. I did not
(33:35):
run with her, but I hope to be back to
it eventually. But yeah, you just have to sort of
be patient and understand that life can look a little
different for a while, and that's not necessarily good or bad.
I mean, I ran every day for three years for
a while, and now I haven't run in months, and
it's just that that's what life is like right now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
It doesn't mean life will be different in the future.
Maybe it will be.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Maybe I'll be back to running all the time, or
maybe I won't be. I don't know, but just sort
of take it as it comes, and life keeps moving forward.
And I if I think back, like in sort of
two week chunks, any given day, I don't necessarily feel
all that much different than the day before. But if
I look back what could I do two weeks ago,
and what could I do two weeks before? Then, then
I see some real progress. And so that's a little
(34:23):
bit more hardening.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yes, no, it's exciting. The uncertainty piece is hard. It's
the hardest part. If you knew exactly what the path
was going to look like, and if I could have
told myself, oh, in January, it'll be running great, like
the whole thing would have been less, less painful. But
I guess you're right. Just appreciate the small progress and
maybe not try not to be tied to any specific outcome.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, people don't like uncertainly. It's why we have trouble
with ending. So yeah, but lots of things to think
about in this episode. We will be back next week with.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
More and making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoe box dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box
on Instagram, and you.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both Worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.
Welcome to best of both worlds, This says Laura. This
episode is airing in mid March of twenty twenty four.
(00:47):
I am going to be interviewing Emily P. Freeman about
her new book How to Walk into a Room, which
is not really about how to walk into our room.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
It's about knowing when.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
It is time to move on from one chapter of
life to another. And so this book is a lot
about endings, and so it's an interesting question because we
don't always know that something is ending, and I think
people in general don't handle endings necessarily as well as
we could, or as mindfully as we could, and so
that's a topic we talk about.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
A lot in this interview.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
So Sarah, have you had a last time for something
that you didn't actually know was an ending at the time.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I would say a lot of the stuff I did
towards the end of my program director journey through a
lot of last times that I may not have really
like thought about we're going to be last times, not
that the end was so abrupt. I guess maybe I
did maybe have some awareness, but I didn't really think
of the poignancy of what that really meant, like the
last time I interviewed candidates, or the last time I
ran a faculty meeting or something like that. And you know,
(01:49):
it's interesting. I don't think I'm someone who does super
well with endings in general. I don't mind moving on
to things, and I'm certainly I don't shy away from
quitting things that are working. I feel like that's actually
a strength of mind. But when it comes to ceremoniously
like acknowledging the closing of something, I think it's something
I need to work on. So I'm excited for this interview.
(02:10):
What about you?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, I was thinking about a couple indings that I
didn't necessarily know were endings at the time. My parents
had you know, I lived with them in South be
In Indiana for a couple of years, and then they
were there for about twenty years after I left, and
I went to go stay in their house with them
one night and a couple of years ago, and it
turned out then a couple of months after that that
(02:33):
they decided to sell the house and retire and move
out to the East Coast. So that was certainly the
last time I will ever be in that house. I mean,
I may not wind up in South Bend, Indiana for
any particular reason. I mean, there's no real reason to
go there if they are not there, and it's not
the kind of place you just wind up necessarily passing through.
So that's kind of crazy to think too that I
(02:54):
might who knows if I'll ever be there again, but
certainly I will probably not be in that house that
I spent a great many nights in in the course
of my life. Where else to thinking of this? So
sometimes you think things are the end and they're not
than they are. And then with nursing babies, So if
anyone I don't know, some people have read my newsletters
(03:15):
for a long long time, and I had mentioned something
about it being a last time for I thought in
it was probably March or April of twenty sixteen. Then
baby Alex, who was you know, about fifteen months at
the time, is the last time I've been nursing a baby.
I was like, oh, that's the end of a chapter
of my life. But of course, haha. Then we decided
(03:36):
to have another baby, so is in it for several
more years since it turns out that this particular baby
was way into it, so that took longer to end
that journey than I thought. But there has, in fact
now been a last time for nursing a baby.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
It's about that time. It's definitely time.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, And sometimes it's true you don't know when the
end is going to be. And reflecting back on that,
I'm not sure I knew my last time with Cameron
was giving me my last time because he was my
child who like just one day was like I'm not
doing this, Like you don't know that's coming necessarily. Maybe
there are some signs and that can be really heartbreaking.
But then at the same time, maybe it's better not
to know that it's the last time, because again, I
(04:14):
don't like endings, so maybe that's.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
A good thing. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I had
more of a sense of that.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Finally, with this the fifth baby is like, okay, the
last time for various things with babyhood. But you know
the thing about having five kids, as you're probably ready
by the end of the fifth kid to have that
be the last time you potty train a child, for instance,
I'm kind of a thankless task. All right, Well, let's
hear what Emily has to say about endings and how
we can be a little bit more mindful about them.
(04:40):
So Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Emily P.
Freeman to the program. So, Emily, could you introduce yourself
to our listeners.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
I would love to. It's so great to be here
with you today. Well, I am joining you from North Carolina,
where I live with my husband John. We've been together
twenty two years and we have three kids, twins who
are twenty one seventeen, so we've lived the whole life
together of navigating. We've almost made it through the teen years,
which has been great. But I'm an author, I'm a
(05:08):
podcast host. I have a podcast called The Next Right Thing,
where I help people who experience decision fatigue and chronic
hesitation discern their next right thing. In faith, work in.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Life awesome, awesome, And so of course we're here talking
about Emily's new book which is called How to Walk.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Into a Room.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
But we are not literally walking into any rooms with
you know, Pizaz or anything like that. It's more of
an allegorical sort of thing. So maybe you can explain
explain the metaphor for us.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Sure, I had a nine year old say, well that's easy. Watch,
I'll do it right now, I can open the door.
Watch get me doing it, which I love that, you know.
The idea really is that if life were a house,
then every room holds a story. And I think we
all understand what it's like to walk into a literal
room and feel like, yeah, this is a room where
I belong, This is my room, this is my place.
We also understand the physical feeling of walking into a
(06:01):
room where you're like, this is not my place. I
do not belong here. But really, the question that I'm
positing in this book is the question of what do
you do when a room that you're in is no
longer a room where you belong? What do I do
when I'm having to discern, oh, this was my place
vocationally or connection wise or friend group wise or volunteer
(06:23):
work wise, and then you begin to realize, oh, something
has shifted either in the room, in the people around me,
or in myself, and I need to discern, Okay, what
do I do? How do I leave this place? Is
it time to leave this place? And what am I
going to do next? So, because that's where I have
found in conversations with people about decision making, where we
(06:45):
feel the most stuck is when we're considering leaving a space,
especially one that we either fought really hard to get
to or means a whole lot to us.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Absolutely, I mean, I find this concept of endings fascinating
because everyone knows there's a beginning to something. I mean,
you start something, you come up with new ideas, you
plunge into things. But everything also has an end, right, Like,
everything is going to end at some point, whether it's
that eternal weekly staff meeting, like there's going to be
(07:15):
a Tuesday where there isn't a staff meeting, or probably
before that, a time you were not leading it or
whatever it is, but there's going to be a Tuesday
without it. Right, you know, there's an end to absolutely,
I mean, I mean, do people really think about that?
I mean, as you study decision making, I mean, do
people go into most things knowing there is going to
be an end or even thinking about that.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
It's such a great point because I think we often
think when something ends, we're surprised by it. We feel
like we have made wrong choices. We feel like maybe
I've wasted my time and maybe I'm doing something wrong
or I've done something wrong, when in reality, things ending
is the normal, healthy human rhythm of life. But because
(07:58):
we expect that if I'm doing if I've made the
right choice to begin with, and if I'm doing the
right things in the room, then nothing will ever change.
And I think that's the thing that we need to
shift our narrative about, because the reality is, for one thing,
just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have
to do it forever. And I think sometimes we think like, oh,
but I went to college for this job and I
(08:19):
am really good at it, and people would kill to
have this position, So who am I. We start to
have like labels on ourselves, like I must be selfish,
I must be an idiot, I must not know what
I'm doing. If I'm considering walking away from this thing
or considering trying something new where I have to God
forbid be a beginner again. And so I think a
(08:41):
big part of our work is to begin to change
our narrative about what it means to be successful, what
it means that this place worked for me. Because the
reality is, if you were in a job for five
ten years and you start to sense a change, it
doesn't mean you wasted five or ten years of your life.
It means you lived those five or ten years and
now something has changed and it's time to do something else.
But it doesn't have to mean something about me as
(09:03):
a human person. It doesn't have to be an identity thing.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, I mean, because I guess that's the that falls in.
You know, we need to be better about dealing with me.
Called the chosen endings in life. You know that you
talk about how there are anticipated endings. I mean, you
kind of hope your kids will graduate from high school
at some point and go on to whatever the next
thing is for them. There's the forced endings, which seem
unfortunate sometimes but it happens, you know, you lose a
(09:28):
job or whatever else. It's you know, these things happen.
It's the chosen endings that are the complicated ones.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
They're the ones where we have to decide to stay
or go, and sometimes we would rather someone else decide
it for us. Unfortunately, we can't most of the time
delegate our decision making when it comes to our own lives.
We thankfully have choice, but sometimes that makes it complicated
because we want to make so desperately. We want to
make the right one, and we're afraid we're going to
(09:56):
mess it all up.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, no, I've ever heard that from people like a
They were actually kind of relieved to be laid off
or whatever it is that you know, because they were
on their way out, but this made the decision for them.
In your book, you talk about the fact that you
moved a lot as a kid, and I wonder if
that has contributed to your sense of understanding that things
(10:18):
end in a way that I think some people don't.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
It's interesting you say that, because I don't know that
I have fully put that together, but I think you
might be right. My dad was in a We moved
a lot when I was a kid. He was a
disc jockey on the radio, which is so funny. People like, oh,
was you were you in the military. It was your
dad in the military. No, he was in radio, but
it did.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
You had to go as often for radio we did
the military.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
And you move around, and so I do think that
afforded me a worldview that understood that if you want
to make friends here, you better do it quickly because
this isn't going to last forever. And in some ways
that's really sad to think of. But in another way,
it was a character building exercise as a kid that
I didn't even know because I got to meet a
(11:01):
lot of different people and I got to learn that
this thing can be good for as long as it's good,
and also if it's terrible, it won't last forever. And
so I think I've experienced that as a kid. I
would not have articulated it that way. In contrast, my
husband John, he was born in, grew up in, and
we still live in his hometown. So when we talk about,
(11:23):
you know, there have been times in when you have
twenty years together, there's times when you think about, like
what if we were to move or go to this
other place. We haven't done it yet. We've moved houses,
but not towns, and our conversation is really different. His
way of thinking about making a change is different than mine.
I see such value now, like being in one place
and having roots and our kids are in one place.
(11:44):
He sort of has more of like whoa would it
be like to be someplace else? And I think it's
really important to recognize and to know about ourselves what
our own narratives of staying and leaving are, because they're
going to inform all of the decisions we make.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
then we'll be back talking about some specific endings that
have happened in your life that maybe you can share
how you made those decisions. Well, I am back interviewing
(12:23):
Emily P. Freeman, who is the author of the brand
new book how to Walk into a Room Again, not
literally walking into a room, We hope you figured that
out a few years ago, but how we make decisions
about making big changes in our lives, and particularly as
we're talking about today, how we know whether.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
To end things.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Earlier, you mentioned if you're in a room that you've
perhaps fought for, or helped create, or anything like that,
it can be particularly challenging to figure out that it
might be time to end things. And you talk about
two experiences that you have had with ending things that
I'd like to talk on both of them. One was
(13:03):
ending your involvement in a business that you had helped start,
So maybe you can talk a little bit about that
and what led to your decision to end there and
how you made that choice.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
We started this business seven eight years ago, and it
was an online company for writers to help writers kind
of figure out that they had a voice and to
maybe if they wanted to get published, to help them
understand what that looks like. And so it was all
about balancing the art of writing the business of publishing.
But it started out, as sometimes these things do, as
a hobby. It was sort of like a side thing.
(13:35):
We made a little money, but over time, specifically during
the COVID years, that hobby grew into a full time gig.
And it was surprising. It was a gift. But before
I knew it, this thing that I had started on
the side and was really happy about and loved and enjoyed,
and there were hard parts about it, but as all
things go, but now it became kind of front and center,
(13:58):
and I went from sort of being like a creative
and being able to express myself as a writer to
helping other people express themselves as writers to then managing
a team who could help the people. So I went
from sort of being the maker to being more of
a manager. And I don't know if you've read Paul
Graham's essay about maker time and manager time, but I
recognized very quickly that manager time is not the way
(14:21):
I roll, and so that was a big contributor to
me understanding and recognizing, like, my days are probably numbered
in this type of business. But much like you know
I talk about in endings all the time, we really
want for our endings to line up with like it's
time to go and I feel ready, And those are
(14:43):
wonderful times when that happens. But the reality is most
of us live in the gap in between, which is
I'm ready to go, but it's not time. And that's
where I found myself with this business decision. And there
were lots of things involved, but the bottom line is
I was ready to go about three years before I
was able to go, and so there was a a
lot of things that had to happen in those three years.
It was a wonderful character building time of learning patience.
(15:06):
If the opposite is true for you, where it's time
to go, but you're not ready. That can be a
great time to build courage where you're having to step
forward into something even though you don't feel ready at all.
And so I ended up about a year or so ago,
sold my shares in that company and was able to
end end things there. And it was bittersweet. There were
hard parts that I was glad to leave behind, but
(15:29):
there were really lovely parts and lovely people that I
was sad to leave behind. But again, it doesn't mean
that I chose wrong or that it was wrong to
go into that business. It was just there was a
time for it, and then that time came to an end.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Well. I like how you have that rubric there that
it's like you can be ready, but the change is
not ready to happen. Right. It could also be that
people are ready for you to move on and you
are not quite ready.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
For that as well.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I mean, I wonder how you can discern if it's,
you know, if you are pushing things for it, if
it's that it's not ready, or that something like the
is going on, you know that where maybe you're just
procrastinating on pushing this forward.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
Right, listen, procrastination as a whole. Could we write a
whole book about that. We could. We could, But I
think there are some questions that you can ask yourself.
I mean, when I was considering not only that the
business space, but other spaces in my life, if is
it time for me to make a change? And how
can I know for sure? And a few questions I
asked myself were one, are there corners, sections, people, or
(16:28):
parts of this room that I'm avoiding? In other words,
am I hesitant to turn the lights all the way on?
Are there things that I'm like turning a blind eye
to that I don't want to look at? And what
would happen if I did look directly at them? That's
one piece of information. Another one asking myself, is anyone
or anything missing from this room? And if so, who
(16:49):
or what? And recognizing that doesn't mean that if there
are people missing or things missing, you got to get
out of there. No, it's just a bit of information
to recognize who belongs here, who doesn't belong here, who
has already left this space, who's walking into this space?
And these are more pieces of information. A final question
(17:09):
you can ask yourself when you're thinking about the rooms
of your life if it might be time or not
is to what extent can I be myself here? And
this can be true not just for a job or
a faith community you're a part of, or a volunteer position.
It can also be true in a relationship. So, for example,
do you have to change yourself to such a degree
that you don't even recognize yourself in order to inhabit
(17:31):
this room? Or if people who know and love you
show up when you're with this person or in this space,
would they recognize you? Would they see a version of
you that they know and can support and get behind,
or are they like, are you feeling like you're constantly
having to censor yourself or edit yourself or muffle your
(17:51):
own ideas or opinions? Those are just the more you
answer and look at some of those questions, And there's
ten of them that I share that are good to
think about. That can give you again, it's not a
yes or no, but it can give you some arrows
to know that you're moving in a direction of either
walking towards the door or maybe staying in this space,
but maybe making some changes along the way.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah, well, what do you mean about that? That you
should yield to the arrows rather than obsessing over answers.
I guess the idea is that maybe you don't have
to make a decision about ending or not ending immediately,
but there are things you can kind of pay attention
to along the way.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Sometimes when we recognize that we feel just sort of
a general sense of stuckness or like a discomfort a
lot of us, what we want to do is I
feel uncomfortable, I don't like it, I need to make
a change. And sometimes that's true, but I would venture
to say a lot of times that's a little premature.
(18:49):
Is that the first sign of discomfort is a time
to begin to pay attention, ask yourself some questions, and
to begin to look for arrows. What we want is
a final answer I'm uncomfortable, solve it. What's the decision
I need to make? But I would love to begin
to encourage us and myself included, to slow our role
(19:11):
a little bit and to begin to enter into what
is more a process of discernment, which is, rather than
looking for I have a question I need an answer yesterday,
is to enter into I have a question, what is
maybe an arrow to one next right thing that I
can do today? And I might not know the final
answer I might have to follow three, five, ten arrows
(19:33):
before I get to my final decision. But to know
that's a healthy process of decision making. And when you
make your decisions that way, if you're afforded the time
to do it, when you make that decision, you do
it more wholeheartedly. You do it from a place of
more confidence, so that five months from now, if things
are really hard again, you're not wondering, like so much,
(19:56):
did I make the wrong decisions? Like No, I took
my time and I did what I could, and I
I followed the arrows the best I knew how So
it can give you confidence not just for now, but
for later too.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, and to make sure that you're ending the right thing.
I mean, I think when we get upset sometimes and
feel stuck, we might think that everything in life needs
to change, or the most obvious thing needs to change,
as opposed to I don't know something else that you
haven't even thought of. So with that, I wonder if
you could talk a little bit about the other change
(20:25):
I mentioned earlier, the ending that was a church you
helped found, so that you and your husband helped start
a church, and then you decided at some point along
the way that you needed to leave that. It sounds
like that was even more fraught for you than the
business decision.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
It was, well, we didn't actually help start the church,
but we were a part of the church when they
were moving into a new building, and so we were
kind of really a part of getting that going. And
it was a real community thing, you know, joining in
it was our place, you know, and I think we
all understand what it's like to be part of a
community where you walk in and most people know who
(21:01):
you are, your kids have grown up there. If you're sick,
people bring you meals.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
It's a place where we spent our time, where we
gave money and when it was appropriate to do so,
and where we just generally enjoyed being. And you know,
when that's connected to something deeply rooted in you, like
your faith, then that's even another layer of connection in
a space. And so this was a space that we
felt really close to and was a really meaningful place
(21:28):
for us. But as these things go, this was not
an overnight decision. You know, this was a place that
we loved, but also there were questions that we had
there and looking back, you know, it was maybe a
two or three year process really of asking ourselves questions
like are the stakes too high for us to stay?
And sort of once the stakes of for us staying
(21:50):
felt like they outweighed the risk of leaving, that's when
we decided to kindly finally make that change. But again,
that was one that was following a lot of arrows
on the way out because the stakes were so high,
because we were so rooted in this community. And that
is not a lighthearted decision that we made. And it's one, honestly,
(22:10):
four years later, that we're still wrestling with, not whether
or not we made the right choice. I believe that
we did for us at the time, but just wrestling
to find and look for what does it look like
to find community? Now? What does it look like to
belong to a new faith community? And we're doing that slowly,
but man, it's that process is a lot slower than
I would prefer, honestly.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, well, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean, it sounds like we have to understand that
with endings, with decisions, there's going to be some regret
either way.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I mean, so if you're hoping for a regret free decision,
you should probably rethink that.
Speaker 4 (22:42):
Yes, that's an excellent point.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
So you're going to write either way, it's always going
to be hard. Although one thing I found fascinating and
when you're in the process of this discernment, figuring out,
you know, following the errors do I say, do I.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Go, you began writing haiku.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
So let's talk about the important of sort of regular
daily rituals as you are trying to make decisions about
your life.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Rituals can be so kind. I grew up in a
self inflicted kind of rigorous way of life, like kind
of gave myself rules and if I didn't follow them,
I felt terrible about it. But that's not really what
I mean by ritual here. Really, it's just any type
of rhythm that you can engage that helps you be
more fully yourself. And sometimes, you know, some of the things,
(23:27):
especially in endings, when things end, some of the things
that we reach for that used to be familiar and
felt right. When something ends, some of our rituals and
rhythms changed too, and the things that maybe used to
feel right and that we used to enjoy, maybe they
don't feel so right anymore, maybe they don't feel like us.
And I just want to say that out loud, because
I think that's normal and good and when that happens,
(23:50):
if that happens, maybe it could be helpful to experiment
playfully with do rituals and rhythms and so one that
I did. You know, for me, I found it to
be hard. You know, prayer is a big part of
my life, but I found the way I used to
pray to be really different than the way that I
was wanting to engage that practice, and so instead I
started to write haiku. Now let me just be clear, Laura.
(24:12):
It was not like the traditional Japanese good God, it's
not good, but it was like what you learn in
like middle school or so seven syllable five And I
did it, and you know, I would put an and
or something in there to kind of make it work,
which is not what you're supposed to do. But you
know what, it was not for publishing. It was just
(24:32):
for me. It was just to kind of continue to
engage my own practice of expressing myself when long form
journaling was not accessible to me anymore at that time.
Just my brain wasn't working that way. But five seven
five I could do that, and I did. And let
me tell you, I mean I probably wrote one hundred
of them during that season of life, just you know,
going through and some of them, you know, when you
(24:53):
write a hundred, a few of them are good, most
of them are terrible. But I found it to be
a really just a way to may not take myself
so seriously during that time that was difficult. And now
I have I have a one hundred high coud ap.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Prove it, yeah, which you can do what you wish with.
At this point, well, I wanted to revisit one point
that you made it earlier, just that the ending does
not define the story that you're quote from the book.
So maybe you could just elaborate a little bit more
on that that just because something ended doesn't mean it
(25:26):
was the wrong thing, or that it was bad or.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Anything like that. It just ended.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
I think sometimes this is most clear in something like
job loss or maybe even a breakup, where you're like,
that was a terrible ending, like that, just it just
did not go the way I thought it would go.
It did not end the way I hoped it would end.
A lot of times we imagine the final episode of
(25:51):
our favorite sitcom and we think that's how my ending's
gonna go. It's gonna be a movie ending, and it
never almost never is. If you get it, cheers to you,
but most of us don't. I think the temptation, though,
is to paint the entire experience with the same hues
that happened at the end. And the reality is we
are whole people who live whole lives, and we can
(26:13):
appreciate the gifts of the experience even if it ended terribly.
We just can, and I think sometimes we have to,
and that's looking at the experience as a whole. We
may not be able to do that right away, and
I think that's important to notice, is that if you
have a terrible breakup, it just might have to be
terrible for a while, and that person has to be
(26:35):
a villain. But over time, I think we might understand
that none of us are all hero or all villain
and to help us become more wholeheartedly who we are.
I think it's good to reflect on our experiences for
what they were, both the beautiful and the difficult. But
the ending doesn't get to hijack the narrative. The ending
is a plot point, it's not the whole story.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah, now, that's good to now, I mean, especially with
things like relationship and people who have kids together, for instance.
I mean, if the relationship hadn't happened, you wouldn't have
these kids. But the relationship ended, it happened. You know,
you have to accept that good things can happen despite
maybe something not going well at the end. Well, speaking
(27:17):
of endings, we're coming up on the end of ours.
We always end our interviews with a love of the week,
so this is something that we are enjoying right now.
And since I'll go first, so you can think of
something to be you know, pop culture, food, book, whatever.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And I'm going to go with given that you're talking
about haiku poetry rules.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I mean, longtime listeners know I'm writing a sonnet a week,
you know, two lines a day, so fourteen lines in
the course of a week, and been doing this for
a while.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
But what the reason I like it is the rules.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Make you think about it. But then it makes if
you could stick with the rules, it's like at least
kind of decent, right because it's done the rules, Whereas
if it's total free form, you know, there's a lot
more variability. I mean, it could be great, could also
be awful. So I like poetry rules, so I'm a
big fan of the haikup rules, even if we're not
doing the proper like Japanese walk off to think of
(28:12):
the thing that you know you're not saying that's off
there in the distance.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
How about you? What are you loving this week?
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Well? You ask this on the day after I just
finished speaking of the end of a series. I just
finished watching Ugly Betty. Okay, didn't see that coming, did you?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Now?
Speaker 4 (28:32):
I did not, but I missed it when it came
out originally, And so I just watched the series and
it's just such a delightful show. America Ferreira stars in it,
and she's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
She's great.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Yeah, she's so great. And so I was like, I
should watch that series, and I did, and I just
finished it and I'm nostalgic about it because it's over.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
There are no more, but there are no episodes coming out.
It really is truly over.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Well, now you just need to find the next thing, right,
That's what I need, the next right thing, exactly right?
All right? Well, Emily, thank you so much for joining us.
And why don't you tell our listeners where they can
find you?
Speaker 4 (29:06):
Oh, you can find almost everything at Emilypfreeman dot com.
It's my name. I also have the next writing podcast
we drop every Tuesday, and then on subsec I'm the
sole Minimalist.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Awesome. Well, we'll be sure to check that out. Thanks
so much for joining us, Emily.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
All right, Well we are back.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I was interviewing Emily P. Freeman about her book How
to Walk Into a Room. So, Sarah, this question, I
guess start for you, and I guess for me too.
This listener writes, can you share what it was like
coming back from an injury? So Sarah had a leg
injury this fall that precluded her running for a couple months,
(29:43):
but then she has now been back and as readers
and listeners know, she recently got a lifetime pr in
the half marathon, which is pretty awesome to do that
in your forties.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Many of us do not.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Get faster over time, so Sarah has defied time in
all sorts of ways. So we want to hear a
little bit about how she came back from that. And
he thought she had about that, and then the listener
asked how my back was doing. So I'll give a
one minute thing about that later, but let's hear about you, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, I was, I mean It was a rough couple
months there for listeners. I talked about it, but it
was a very unfortunate incident with me not putting my
car into park properly and then basically getting my leg
kind of like a crush injury underneath the door of
the car. Not a lot of fun, extensive bruising. I
thought I had torn my meniscus, but I didn't, so
there was There was actually no like.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Bad structural damage.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
It was just eight ton of like crazy amounts of
hematoma soft tissue damage like in my leg, and I
couldn't run for a while. It took me a really
long time to agree to that. I think trying to
make it work and then I would like fall and
make things worse, and was finally like, Okay, this isn't happening.
And I did just do nothing for a couple of weeks,
(30:57):
and then I realized that I think I could bike,
so we got a peloton. We rented a peloton, which
is something you can do, you don't have to purchase
one outright, and that actually was very helpful just to
give me an outlet. So I continued to do some
strength training that I felt like I was able to
do and I did biking, and I really didn't run
for a while. And you know, it's so funny because
(31:20):
it felt like such a long time while it was happening,
especially because I was so used to running this very steady,
high mileage. It just felt like my life just felt different,
and I was very unhappy about it. Once I found
the biking, that was like, Okay, this actually works. This
is like a really nice substitute. And now looking back,
I'm like, that was such a blip, like it was nothing,
because I mean it wasn't nothing. It was about two months.
(31:43):
But by the end of December I was running really well.
We had taken a trip to a Millia Island and
I was like, oh, I'm back, Like I just felt
really good, and January was great training and I can
honestly say one thing that made me so sad was
I just felt like I was making this great progress
around doctor over right when I got hurt. But I
now feel like I'm actually even like in better speed
(32:05):
wise shape than I was back then, So we're resilient.
We can come back. And I guess the thing I
would say is like, don't try to rush it, and
definitely seek out the types of support that feel right,
whether that's physical therapy, whether that's actual therapy, whether that's
talking to friends, and just don't try to rush it,
because like this idea that you're just going to like
(32:26):
lose all your fitness in five minutes is just not true.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
We can come back.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, sometimes we think our endings are not in fact endings,
that it was not the end of her running journey.
That I keep coming back to this idea that time
is the secret ingredient in all sorts of things. As
this is airing, I'm about two months out from when
I had my back incident slash leg incident that basically
left me bedbound and my pretty standard run of the
(32:51):
mill aging person bulging discs pressing down on nerves and
rendering life undoable for a while. And you know, I
took my steroids and painkillers and stayed immobile pretty much
until I could start moving. But it's fascinating to watch
you just you do, in fact, often keep getting better
(33:13):
just through time, right if you're not doing things to
make it worse, and you're trying to slowly develop new
abilities that you had before. And so I've been kind
of fascinated to watch that. Although it has been very
frustrating in its own way. I'm still not running. I mean,
maybe when this airs I will be. This is late
February when we're recording it. We're in a hotel room
together in Naples. Sarah ran this morning. I did not
(33:35):
run with her, but I hope to be back to
it eventually. But yeah, you just have to sort of
be patient and understand that life can look a little
different for a while, and that's not necessarily good or bad.
I mean, I ran every day for three years for
a while, and now I haven't run in months, and
it's just that that's what life is like right now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
It doesn't mean life will be different in the future.
Maybe it will be.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Maybe I'll be back to running all the time, or
maybe I won't be. I don't know, but just sort
of take it as it comes, and life keeps moving forward.
And I if I think back, like in sort of
two week chunks, any given day, I don't necessarily feel
all that much different than the day before. But if
I look back what could I do two weeks ago,
and what could I do two weeks before? Then, then
I see some real progress. And so that's a little
(34:23):
bit more hardening.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yes, no, it's exciting. The uncertainty piece is hard. It's
the hardest part. If you knew exactly what the path
was going to look like, and if I could have
told myself, oh, in January, it'll be running great, like
the whole thing would have been less, less painful. But
I guess you're right. Just appreciate the small progress and
maybe not try not to be tied to any specific outcome.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Well, people don't like uncertainly. It's why we have trouble
with ending. So yeah, but lots of things to think
about in this episode. We will be back next week with.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
More and making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoe box dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box
on Instagram, and you.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both Worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
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