April 21, 2022 • 57 mins
This week, Jamie has a deep conversation with her friend, Dani Shapiro. Dani is a writer and host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. They discuss family, honesty and how to be a friend without expectations. Tune in to find out how a book cover sparked their friendship.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If there's something already unlogative. I'm a good friend. Hi everybody,
it's Jamie Lee Curtis. You're listening to the Good Friend Podcast,
presented to you by I Heart Radio. It's a podcast
(00:22):
about friendship, sort of the good, the bad, and the ugly,
the triumphs of friendship, the immense connection and emotion of friendship,
the laughter and occasionally the tears. We explore it all
in an unscripted, very free form way with many, many
(00:42):
different guests, some I'm very close friends with, some I've
never met. And I hope that you will take away
from it something that connects you to your friends, and
that the ideas that we talk about can maybe be
taken into your own friendships. So sit back, or take
a walk, or however you listen, I hope you enjoy
(01:03):
it and stay tuned and the load on a good friend.
Look at what's happening here right now. Look how delighted
I am I got your beautiful package today. That was
such a gorgeous thing. Well, for the uninitiated listener, um,
(01:28):
I was raised by a woman who you know, I'm
trying to remember if my mom I always had to
write thank you notes. That was like like a given,
like absolute. But I'm trying to remember if my mother
said always bring a hostess gift or if that was
maybe my own invention. I think it was sort of mine.
(01:51):
And so, um, what Danny Shapiro, my guest here on
the Good Friend podcast, is mentioning, is that as a
hostess gift to guests, I found from my favorite little
store by the way, if any of you are looking
for a new place to spend, it's a wonderful store
called Sir slash madam Um. And it has beautiful house
(02:15):
of jay and wooden pieces and linen and tapestries. And
they happened to have handkerchiefs that's a friend. And coffee
mugs for the male guests. They got coffee mugs that
say friend. It's beautiful on the box says friend. And
(02:38):
and have you always had I mean, have you always
had that handwriting like that beautiful, beautiful, It's so distinctive,
it's so completely yours. I would know it anywhere, and
I love it so much. I mean, was that sort
of was that your mother? Was that part? Like? Was
that like penmanship? And kind of so what you all
don't also need to know, which is so amazing because
(03:00):
I'm gonna answer question and then I'm gonna stop. Is
that Danny also is a fantastic besides being a you know,
it's the words. The words become so excuse my French
effing sheep, So the hyperbole gets in my way sometimes.
Danny is a talented writer. I met her because of
(03:21):
her novels, we bonded because of her memoir, and she
also has now expanded, particularly one of her memoir into
podcasting and conversations and now travels the world doing really conversations,
really getting into the meat of the matter. So it's
(03:42):
so wonderful that she's sort of interviewing me here and
asking me about my handwriting. So here is the truth
of my handwriting, Danny Shapiro. I like my hair. I
never felt um good. I don't know about you. I mean,
we can obviously this is you know, when I was young,
(04:03):
I did not like my body. I didn't know what
I was, where I was, what where I began and ended.
I didn't have real definition at all. And if you
look back on any history of Jamie pictures of me
back in the day, you know my hair was long
and then it was short, that it was curly the thing,
and um, you know, I had my hair permed once
(04:24):
on a thing, and then I dyed it blonde for
a movie. And then my hair broke off, and for
the first time I went to a hairdresser in Beverly
Hills name jose Ebert, who had a book called Shake
Your Head, Darling, which I guess was like the whole
sort of frothy hair, and he cut my hair off.
And that was really the first beginning of it. So
(04:44):
hair was always a problem for me until I went, oh,
really right, like short hair, and the minute I get
it a little longer and I'm like, oh, maybe I'll
grow my hair, it's like the worst decision. But the
other thing was my handwriting. If you look back on
my childhood teen handwriting, I literally bent left, bent right, looped, flowery.
(05:07):
I wanted the signature my stepmother, my father's wife, had
a very distinctive handwriting, and I remember it and I
remember thinking how amazing it looked, and so over the
years I finally realized, oh, I don't write in cursive.
I print. And as soon as I started printing with
(05:29):
as you have kindly said, in some sort of way,
that has become me it has solidified or at least
established the way I write speaking of the way people right,
good segue. Huh huh. See see, I didn't even realize
we were recording from right right from the beginning. You
know what my experience is that because of the nature
(05:54):
of this, I my audient, my audience, my your mind.
You people are my mine and mine only. You know,
as you know, people have a lot of podcasts to
choose from, and so whoever has found their way here
has found their way here for a reason. And the
reason for me is that it is an unexpected, unplanned
(06:16):
conversation about friendship. So I like to just begin because
it's how friendships just begin. So you are the only
person I will speak to on my podcast who I
twitter stalked or cyber stalked or internet stalked. I wrote
you a fan letter, I remember, and I was thinking
(06:39):
about it today. Um, I was thinking about my my
novel Family History had come out. It was a new
ish but you know, it's been out for probably a
few months. And I was checking my email one morning
and there was an email from Jamie Lee Curtis, and
I was like, you know, it's sort of like the
way that people when they win mccar arthur's or they
(07:01):
find out that they've been nominated for something, and it's
like yeah, i'll right, and they hang up on the person.
I was like, yeah, sure, Like who's playing a joke
on me? And why is Jamie? And it was a
fan letter and you had, Um, I believe that you're
daughter Annie had and you were at a bookstore in
l a and you just liked the book jacket. That's
(07:22):
exactly right, a completely arresting book checket. I'm looking at
it right now in my office. It's I have only
two book jackets that I love enough to have had
posters made of them, um, to hang in my office,
and that's one of them. And it's a photograph of
a young girl who's hanging upside down from either a
balanced beam or sort of a barn beam. And it's
(07:43):
a really arresting photograph. And you are a wonderful photographer yourself,
and you collect photography, and I think that the photograph
drew you and for no question tital family history. It
was just a great jacket. Yeah, it was a great jacket.
Um it. I need to give props to Hutton's books
in Brentwood, which is long gone. Another another one bites
(08:06):
the dust. But it was a fantastic bookstore, filled with
books and readers of books. Both the staff and the
clientele were avid readers. And I'm an avid reader. I'm
not up voracious reader, and I don't read twenty four
hours a day, but I'm an avid reader. I I
(08:26):
do enjoy to read. And my teenage daughter and I
were at Dutton's and I remember we both were walking
by the new fiction and there was this picture of
this young girl hanging upside down, and I think Annie
sort of looked at it because said, oh, that looks cool,
and I grabbed it and Annie read it first, and
(08:47):
I remember she came to me and said, Mom, you
have to read this. And that hasn't it was not,
you know, it was she was a teenage young woman,
and you know, teenage hood with any of us is challenging.
And it was about a conflict in a family with
the parents. And there was another child and we had
recently had Tom who was an infant, or was a
(09:11):
young kid at the time. And I read it in
our in our country home. I know that just sounds gross,
but it's like up in the mountains it's a log cabin,
but it's a it's our country home. And I remember
I looked on the back and it it had the
you know, contact the author Danny Shapiro dot com or
whatever the through whatever. I don't I don't remember what
(09:34):
the mail address was. And I remember I wanted to
say to you, a woman obviously I had never met,
how rare that was, that the power of a book
to connect people is profound when it really lands, and
it landed for us. It opened a conversation, and I
(09:57):
was thanking you for that, because honestly, it has been struggle,
a struggle, and you know, it was a moment of grace,
and it was because you were the portal through which
that moment of grace occurred, and that was important. I
was thinking too this morning. I knew we were gonna
be talking about friendship and our friendship and friendship and
(10:18):
all things friendship, and I was thinking about sort of
the way it unfolded for us after that, because I
don't know if you remember this, but I remember everything
all right, So I'm sure you'll remember that lunch on
off of Abbot Kinney before launch. So we had a
back and forth, Um, you know, once I was convinced
actually was you. And there was a movie in the works.
(10:44):
Uh you know, family has had an option, and it
was a movie in the works and they were casting it.
And I wrote to you like one evening saying, I
wonder you loved the book. I wonder if you'd be,
you know, interested in playing the main character. You're sort
of the right, you know, you'd be amazing. And then
about two hours later I had this feeling, and the
(11:05):
feeling was, oh, no, no, no, no, no no. This
woman reached out to me human being to human being,
having had this experience of reading this novel. And she's
very famous and she's a very wonderful actor, but she
probably has people asking her for all the time. And
(11:28):
I don't want to be that person. I really don't.
And I wrote back to you and I said, disregard
that previous email you I wrote, I wrote some version
of what I just said to you, like, disregard that.
I that is not my interest in our back and
forth here. And and I think that that was actually
this like second step in our becoming friends. It wasn't
(11:51):
I didn't want anything from you. I think that's the
thing to kind of branch off from really from this
the beginning of this conversation is the idea of wanting
a friendship where you don't want something from someone, because
we're in a business where everybody wants something from everybody
(12:13):
almost always, if it's an endorsement, if it's a blurb,
if it's a can you amplify this? Now with social media?
I'm sure you people listening have seen that. It's you know,
it becomes a bit of a mutual admiration society out there.
You just want to amplify other people's work, and you
(12:34):
have this portal, you know, social media to do it with,
and we've all become adept at it. But I agree
with you. I didn't. I didn't want anything from you.
I didn't want the rights to your book. I wasn't
trying to grab that and somehow kind of turn this
nice feeling into then commerce and business together. There was
(12:57):
no agenda, no agenda at all. And and I think
that that like that feeling of you know, especially when
people meet each other as grown ups, um with a
lot of history behind us. You know, I think I
really treasure the handful of friendships that I've made in
recent years. You know, there's that expression you can't make
(13:19):
an old friend. You can't make an old friend, you know.
It's like, so I have old friends that stay in
my life that might not be people that I would
become friends with today, but they've they've known me. They
knew me when I had you know, when I was
a creature of the handwriting going in every direction of
you know, shapeless creature, but going into just especially in
(13:42):
a way when we know each other's stories in a
certain way of public stories, right, And I think I
just had a very strong feeling of nah. Right. And
so then I was going to be in l A
and actually you pitched me up at my hotel. I
was with my husband and very small sun at the time,
(14:03):
my son I think is probably six. And you picked
me up and said a load of my boys, and
we drove to Venice, to this street on Venice called
Abbott Kinney that has since become like truly one of
my favorite walking streets anywhere in the world. And we
I think we had I think we had coffee or tea.
(14:24):
And then we were walking on at Kinney. I remember
a couple of things. One thing I remember is that
we were passing by some maintenance worker, sanitation guys who were,
you know, taking out the garbage in and they recognized you,
and they shouted across this empty lot at you, like
I love your work, and you shouted back, I love
your work. And I just thought like, wow, okay, all right, um.
(14:49):
And then there was a stray cat in the courtyard
of the place where we were sitting and having our tea,
and you walked over to a table u where there
were a couple of people having their breakfast, and you said,
excuse me, and they looked up at you, like yeah,
and you said, could I take your milk for the
cat and just put it in my sure? So they
(15:13):
were just all of these kind of I just was
kind of witnessed too. And I know you don't like compliments,
so I'll I'll move through that. No, I'm I'm just
I appreciate everything you've said. It's not like I don't
like a good compliment. We all do. I was witnessing
your generous humanity and your absolute determination to not let
(15:35):
your celebrity be a barrier between you and other human beings.
And I appreciate that and I definitely try to do
so in my daily life. I do I do want
to be a worker among workers, and I do I
remember the cat Um. I don't think I remember the
(15:56):
the maintenance workers, but I will can firm that that occurred,
even though I don't have a distinct memory of it.
What I remember was we were walking down this street
and we passed a jewelry shop and you know, there
was pretty you know, don't know why jewelry shops are.
You know, you look at things and you're like, oh,
(16:16):
that's pretty. Oh yeah, look at that. Oh that's pretty. Yeah,
oh thing. And I said something like, well, yeah, but
I don't I only I only wear one person's jewelry.
And you said, what do you mean. I said, well,
I'm neighbors and a very close friend of a jeweler
ning Kathy Waterman, and I am loyal and I and
(16:41):
I said, you know, I'm wearing my child charm and
it has my children's name on it and it's from her.
And you looked at me, and you went like this,
and I'm now explaining to the people who are not
watching us. Um. She pointed to her ears, her hand
and her neck and she went Kathy Waterman, Kathy Waterman,
Kathy Waterman. And in that moment. That was because Kathy
(17:04):
Waterman had been a new friend through my daughter and
her daughter, and I was incredibly loyal and loved Kathy.
She's also a Lady of the Canyon. I mean, she
is the sort of hippie goddess that we all want
to be, incredibly smart with a lawyer and jewelry designer.
And I just remember like, oh, this is gonna be
(17:27):
so fun because I knew I was going to connect
your dot. I knew it. It was just in that moment.
And then there was another thing that happened about photography,
and we were talking about photography. So in one hundred
yard walk, so many things that mattered to both of us,
so many things that connected to I mean, people don't
wear jewelry unless it speaks to them. It wasn't like
(17:51):
you were fancy women who are changing their big stuff
daily to go with their outfit. You know, these are
we wear in touch every day. There are talismans of
our lives. And here we were two brand new friends.
And what I loved was we were sort of adult
women and we were extending ourselves to say to each other,
(18:13):
do you want to be friends? It was no different
than two little kids meeting in the sandbox going well,
doan't be my pen my friend? Well? If I do,
you you know you we just little kids do it.
Teenagers do it in that way. Hey, what's yours? Cool? Thanks?
(18:36):
I think one of the things that's interesting is like
little kids, Like you've watched your kids, you know, grow
up and have to make friends, and I've watched my
son grow up and make friends or not, you know.
And one of the things that's interesting about like kid
friendships is like whatever draws little kids to each other,
whatever that energy is or what whatever that kind of
(18:58):
um chem history is that can morphin change, right, you know.
I mean Jacob was very close with a couple of
kids in in grade school and up until middle school
that weren't necessarily going to be his you know, like
sort of life long, like they'll always be friends, but
(19:19):
they kind of have taken different paths in life. And
I think there's something that happens when you're pretty fully
baked as uh, you know, a human. You know, you're
pretty like you've come out of the kiln and you
know you're kind of I mean, hopefully we always grow
and change, and hopefully there's always softness and malleability. But
(19:41):
you're You're pretty much who you are, and your losses
and your successes and your loves and your griefs have
all formed you, and so you're I think it's a different,
maybe deeper kind of recognition of like, oh, like fellow traveler.
And the opposite happens to like whenever I'm in New
York or anywhere urban, usually because I live in the
middle of nowhere, so I don't pass by people, I'll
(20:03):
see someone on the street and sometimes the words that
go through my mind is, oh, give that person a
wide berth, you know, like not good energy, like not.
It goes both directions. And I think that that happened
that day, and that was just so cool, and we
did have all of these like kind of really amazing, surprising,
(20:25):
very particular connections. I'm a good friend. We'll be right
back with more good friend after this quick break, so
stick around, friend. I don't know what drew us to
(20:50):
each other. What drew me to you was your work.
It started with the word. It started with your imagination,
your brain, the way you spoke of family, whatever distillation
that novel was of whatever family issues and stuff that
you had either experienced yourself, or bore witness to, or
(21:13):
heard second hand. It comes out through the beautiful creation
of the idea, which you know the John Steinbeck who
says that there are nothing great was ever created by
two people. That it's the miracle of creation takes place
in one mind. Then it can be built on and expanded.
(21:35):
But nothing is invented by two people. It's not possible
because it has to come from one point. And to me,
I was drawn to the emotional reaction I had to
the work that you wrote and then reached out to
(21:56):
say thank you for it. We no attachment, never thought
I'd meet you, you know, kind of said, and then
it began, and it's you know, and then it began,
and then it began because then it's an email, and
then it's I'm going to be in l a and
And the truth is, if we both hadn't leaned in,
(22:17):
we wouldn't be sitting here today talking to each other,
so many years later, so many lives later, because we
leaned in and whatever we trusted in each other in
that moment we met for lunch, we met not even
for lunch. It was, as you said, it was like
a coffee in it. I think we were going to
be together at the most two hours. You know. I
(22:39):
think it was you were doing something in l A
and I was doing and it was like, oh, I'm
in l A. Great, let's just go grab a coffee
and get to know each other. And this is a
beautiful example of that, how we have gotten to know
each other over the years. Um one in particular. You know,
I've I wanted this show show it's such a weird word. Um.
(23:05):
I'm still trying to learn how to talk about what
we're doing because it's happening here, and then of course
it'll people will listen to it later and then you
know what I mean. It's it's a weird world. You've
been doing it for a long time. I'm new at
this part of it, and so I'm learning the language
and the feelings around the language. I very much didn't
(23:26):
want this to be and I have no issue with
people who do do this, but I did not want
this to be about selling things. Um. I felt I didn't.
I didn't ask anybody because of anything that I wasn't
going to people saying well, you have a new book,
and I'd love to have you come and talk about
your new book, Like I don't people's work are going
(23:49):
to come up in conversation because it's the nature. But
I also that's why I didn't want to introduce people
like my next guest is this and has written this that,
but it comes out naturally, so it's it's germane to uh.
You know. A connect the dot that I think is important,
which is you wrote a book called Devotion, which many people,
(24:13):
myself included was very um moved slashed helped by because
you explored as a great memoirist, does you take your
own experience. You go into it, but you take us
with you. And so it's such a great opportunity because
(24:34):
it makes you then look at your own life and
your own family and your own so we go with you.
But it could be my family, it could be so
and so is family. And that's the beauty of a
memoir is that it brings us into yours and then
it connects us back to our own and yours had
to do with faith and searching. Can you just explain
(24:58):
the book for a second so that I can explain
that the context I'm going to talk about, just so
that I don't do a poor example of talking about
what your book is about no thanks um devotion. I mean,
I had no I had I was nobody was more
surprised than I was when I started writing what I
guess was, you know, a spiritual memoir. When I realized
that that was something I was going to be doing,
(25:19):
I was sort of horrified because I don't read them.
Uh it sounded boring to me, like, you know, spending
the next eighteen months of my life contemplating the big questions,
how is there? How is their drama in that? Like
what's going to make anybody want to turn the pages?
And and really, I mean it came to be because
(25:41):
my son, so many things come back down to you know,
my son is that he started asking me questions when
he was a little kid. And those questions were what
do you believe? And what do you think happens when
we die? And um, do you believe in God? And
I was raised with a lot of certainty about all that,
(26:01):
surrounded by a lot of certainty. I was raised in
an Orthodox Jewish home, and I um, I felt like
he deserved a mother who had thought deeply about all that.
And I couldn't say I had I had opted out
and I had sort of run as quickly and as
far away from, you know, any of the big spiritual
questions as I could. And now I was sort of
(26:23):
in early midlife, and here was this little kid who
I wanted. You know, it's not even that he wanted answers,
and I wasn't looking for answers. But when when I
finally started writing Devotion, I had two things in mind.
One is that I wanted to live inside the questions.
I did not want to leave my own backyard. Essentially,
I didn't want to go to India. I didn't want
(26:43):
to go to Israel. I didn't want to go to Tibet.
I had the feeling that the answers weren't like out
there to be grasped, but that they were that if
I opened my eyes, and if I opened my ears,
that a lot would be revealed to me. And that's
and that was the kind of astonishment for me in
(27:03):
writing that book, is that that's what happened. And I
live in the middle of nowhere, and some of the
greatest spiritual teachers of our time like practically wandered into
my backyard. I mean that's an exaggeration, but yeah, and
became friends with you through that process. An utterly, utterly
life changing book for me more than any other book
(27:23):
of mine, because you know, I don't write. I don't
go on journeys ever, so that I can write a
book about the journey, like I have a burning question
of some sort and inquiry, a desire to know something,
and the only way I know how to explore that thing,
and the only way that I can give myself permission
(27:45):
to explore that thing is by putting pen to paper.
So I write the book in order to go on
the journey. In a way I mean, it's it's I mean,
there are some terrific books that are written sort of
as like I'm going to spend a year the you know,
the year of living in this way. That wasn't what
I wanted to do. But the other thing that another
(28:07):
way that that book was life changing for me is
it cured me of my terminal specialness. It cured me
of my I mean, I until devotion. I was terrified
of public speaking. Had to take a sedative if I
was giving a reading in front of twenty people in
(28:28):
a smokey bar in the east village, I had to
medicate myself because I was going to die. I mean,
my heart would pound in my chest, my palms would sweat.
I was so frightened. Um. And then Devotion, the process
of like that exploration, it allowed me to, you know,
(28:49):
to like I now can get up in front of
thousands of people and I really am not. I'm I'm fine,
I'm not I'm not afraid because they're me and I
am them, and it doesn't feel I mean, I'm aware
that what I do is put into language and into
form what we all feel. When I'm writing a memoir,
(29:12):
it's using my own life as a laboratory when I'm
writing fiction. And you know, and it's interesting because your
response to Family History, which is a novel. I actually
think that fiction is more revealing than memoir in many
ways because the writer is not as in control of
it we were. You know, we're pulling from the universe
all around us and things that are not like very
(29:36):
conscious of in order to be able to to make
a world. We're making a world instead of in a sense,
reporting on the world. And when you made Devotion, Um,
you were going to UH Writer's conference in Idaho, and
(29:56):
I was going to be in conversation with you as
we are here now simply Um opening doors and letting
you walk through them in the way you just so
eloquently did about your process of that book and the
process of writing devotion and the surprise you found yourself
(30:17):
doing it. So I we have done this dance before,
you and me, and it's with someone who has that
sort of depth of you know, the sort of trifecta
of the ability to metabolize something in the present, to
be able to live in the middle of the question,
and also the sort of divinity aspect of something that
(30:40):
you've worked out or the book helped you work out about,
you know, why am I effing here? Like? Why am
I here? Um? So for me it was very easy
because I just literally it was like, okay, I'll open
that door. And then we went through that door, and
you took us all explained where we were in that door.
So but what I remember was the trip there, the
(31:05):
flying there. That's what I was thinking about when you
were saying that, because we were both nervous flyers, um,
and we both have children and husbands and friends, and
you know, there is a release of control in a
(31:25):
big way in travel, and we all probably every person
listening to us today has in their lives gotten on
an airplane. And here we were going on a small
airplane to a small area in the mountains to do
this talk together. And yet there was this there was turbulence,
(31:47):
and it was not a terrible flight, but it was
it was a little bomby. What I recall is is
the pilot several times that particular airport is surrounded by mountains.
It's like one of those airports, and uh, you know,
there's not a lot of room for error. Uh. And
(32:09):
I remember the pilot I think trying to come in
back up again a couple of times. Yes, that sort
of deciding not this landing, noop noopnop, and saying I'm
going to try one more time and if we can't land,
then they then werenna go to another place. And and
it was it was t M I for me, Yeah
(32:31):
something a good friend. We'll be right back with more
good friend after this quick break. I don't know what
I remember as we held hands. I remember we looked
(32:52):
at each other. I believe we said the meta prayer
to each other. You know, I'm I know strangers hold
hands when they're nervous. Um. I used to refer to
people as my airplane wife or my airplane husband and
be sit down to a stranger and be like, oh, hello,
you're my airplane husband. How fun. Hi, I'm Jamie. We're
going to be married. And I may grab your leg
(33:13):
or arm and you know you can't. I mean, in
my world, you can't help it. I just can't help
my my, my sister Kelly, um My the o G
best friend. You know, good friend is my sister Kelly,
who would call it making friends and she would say
(33:34):
to me, did you make any friends to day, Janie?
Because I would. You know, there's my airplane husband. He's
sitting next to me, and before we're landing, we have
downloaded the connection and usually there is a connect the dot.
There usually is something that has made that moment together.
Often I will never see them again. Occasionally I get
(33:57):
an occasional text, Hey, Jamie, it's Evan, your airplane husband
from Texas. How are you doing? How's everything? I'm going
to be in l A. Do you want to get
grab a coffee? And most of the time that doesn't happen. Um,
but in those moments I remember. It's funny. I remembered
it this morning when I was preparing and not preparing
(34:20):
like you know, I wasn't like cramming reading every book
you've written, but I was thinking about our friendship and
our connection and what makes a good friend and that
level of trust that we felt. And in that moment
of being a little it was a little funky. It
was just a moment of this is a little funkier
(34:40):
than I even and I'm pretty, you know, water off
a duck's back kind of girl. And it was a
moment and I remember looking in our eyes and that
we were we you know, Let me be safe, may
be happy, may be manly with ease. And I've the
only thing you need to know about the meta prayer
(35:02):
for those uninitiated meta prayers who just received it. I
have because I couldn't remember, I switched it to s words.
So I said, I have changed the meta prayer. And
I may get struck by lightning when I leave my
nature of prayer that it changes over time. Okay, thank you,
(35:24):
Danny Shapiro just saved me from feeling like laying in
bed tonight going like ah um, I say, may I
be safe, May I be satisfied, May I be strong,
May I be steady. M hm. So I have metabolized
that prayer. Into four says, and I do that prayer
(35:49):
for I do it for myself. I do it from
my people, the closest people, UM, my husband and you know,
my immediate family, my children, my sister, my siblings, my family.
Then my friends are the next one. Then my older friends,
(36:09):
the people who are um needing more support right now,
who are vulnerable, and then other people who are vulnerable,
people who are sick, people who are struggling with illnesses.
Then I go to people who I'm in conflict with.
I then go to the general public, the world at large,
(36:30):
strangers and UM. For me, that's how it works, is
that I I and I do that daily with other
sort of readings and meditations. Um and. But that's how
I apply. But I remember looking like I remember it
like it was yesterday, holding hands, looking at each other,
(36:52):
deep into each other's eyes, saying those words, giving each
other the support and comfort. Um. And that's support and comfort.
Isn't that what a good friend is? Ultimately, at the
end of the day, we both don't live near each other.
We're never going to be those kind of girl friends
(37:13):
because it's just physically impossible and we're not those people anyway.
I think though, that it's a mark of a true
friendship when you can pick up where you left off,
and you know, when you don't live you know they're
there are friendships that are like within community. Um. You know,
I have friends who live in my county in northwestern Connecticut,
(37:38):
and I see them probably most frequently, or during this
year of the pandemic, one of my best and oldest friends,
we have a Saturday evening six o'clock date that has
pretty much been like a sacred we're gonna we're gonna
zoom and spend a little time together. Um. But when
(37:59):
we're sort of you know, far flung, and we find
ourselves in the same place, or we get on a
call um, as as you and I have done, you know,
like like a really early morning call. I remember, well,
actually there are two things I want to say. I
was gonna say. I remember when I made my most
(38:20):
recent discovery about family secrets that actually ended up inspiring
the podcast that I that I host, um and and
my book Inheritance. Um, none of that had happened yet.
I was meeting you for coffee at the Brentwood Country Mart.
You know. Actually I remember at another dinner with you
(38:42):
know you and some of your girlfriends who have some
of them have become girlfriends of mine over the years.
At the Brentwood Country Mart, at this place that I
really love called farm Shop, which I've got to say,
I get their emails every day farm Shop, Santa Monica
and it just or Brentwood farm Shop, farm Shop, and
it's like I have such l a like longing, especially
(39:04):
during the pandemic, every time I get one of farm
shops emails, like with their with their takeout menus. But
that's an aside. Um. I remember meeting you at the
Brentwood Country and we were walking around and we I
started to tell you that I had discovered, through taking
a DNA test, that my dad, my beloved, my everything
(39:26):
dad who raised me, had not been my biological father,
which was something I had never known anything about. UM.
And I was in a state of still very much
reeling from it. And I remember you got very focused,
(39:47):
very quiet. We sat outside at a picnic outside at
like a chirp and chicken picnic table, um, and you
just were so I mean talk about support and comfort.
You got it, um instantly. You had you knew me,
(40:11):
you had read enough of my work, you knew what
that I mean talk about like the kind of radical
empathy of that kind of moment, because you know, my experience,
although there are quite a lot of us who have
had this experience, as it turns out, my experience is
not something that everybody can you know, easily relate to.
(40:32):
It was one of my biggest challenges in writing the book,
you know, I mean, in other books of mine, I
write about my father's death in a car accident. While
anybody can connect to that like that could happen to
any of us. I write about my son's illness when
he was a baby and almost losing him. Anyone is
going to be able to empathize with almost losing a child.
(40:53):
I discovered that my father wasn't my biological father from
taking a DNA test, and then I found out that
my parents had fertility problems. They went to a sperm bank,
and my biological father just spurned on her. And then
you know, like what you know, And I encountered a
lot of like what you know, a lot and people
(41:13):
wanting to put band aids on it, people wanting to say, oh,
your father is still your father, you know, like just
like absolute lack of like what's the big deal. You've
got a great life. Look at you. I mean, you
should just be grateful. You've got great genes. It turned
out fine. I got so much of that, Jamie. And
what end or just people wanting to fix it? Fix me,
(41:37):
fix my pain, fix fix the trauma, make it better.
You like just sat there and trained your attention on
me and your compassion, and you asked me questions and uh,
you know you you you got me to just tell
(41:59):
you the story. Um, and it was a gift. And
then we had to meet some other friends for lunch
and and and then we we sort of stopped. But
during the lunch I felt you and I wasn't talking
about it. I wasn't talking about it in the larger group,
and I felt you. I felt like you looking at
me and kind of nodding and taking it in, and
(42:20):
that it was something that you were really deeply processing. Well,
you called it radical empathy. I think if you, if
we were looking for new descriptions or descriptors of good friend,
what does it mean to be a good friend is
that you have to have radical empathy. That's the what
a good friend has. Um. You have to remember you
(42:44):
had written a book called Devotion much of it dedicated
to your father, much of a dedicated two also experiencing wondering,
asking the hard questions why am I a blonde, blue
eyed girl in a Jewish family? Where the F did
(43:08):
I come from? Like, it wasn't you posing that question
of the connection to your devotion to his devotion to
the religion that you, as you said you were raised
in that home of Orthodoxy you still describe in that
book looking in the mirror and going really and so
(43:32):
it wasn't a surprise to me at all. I remember thinking, oh,
of course, and the leaning in. I think we lean
in together, and I think, you know, this show, whatever
it is, it was born out of the pandemic it was.
(43:52):
It wasn't like I was, hmm, I need something to do.
I've got plenty to do. That wasn't it. It was
there's this song on good Friend by Emily King, and
I play her music a lot, and I remember hearing
that song on you know, repeat and saying, oh, I
(44:12):
need to do a show about friendship and call it
good for the good Friend show, like the good Friend podcast.
And again it wasn't like my big need to be
like in the podcast world, and I'm going to get
in there. I really I'm not that person. I don't
spend a lot of time listening to almost anything. I'm busy,
(44:33):
and I'm not that person. And yet the questions started
coming up, what is a good friend? And your description
today of radical empathy is a very good descriptor another
good in the beautiful offering bowl that this show is
(44:55):
by the end of it, all of the different people's
ideas of what it means to be a good friend.
Um In that moment, I remembered everything about that moment
and knew everything that had led up to it, because I,
at that point was a good friend of yours, had
(45:15):
explored devotion with you, had opened those doors with you.
And so it also was heartbreaking to watch you feel,
not intellectualize, but feel that your eyes were brimmed with tears,
beautiful blue eyes just pouring tears down your face gently.
(45:37):
It wasn't a big histrionic moment. It's a big, big
thing to learn what what what you just said about
not intellectualizing it, but feeling it was the like the
difference between what I had been doing up until then,
(45:59):
here's trying to make sense of something that didn't make
sense right um. Recently, I watched Oprah Winfrey's interview with
with Megan Markle and and Prince Harry or the Duchess
of Sussex and Prince and Prince Harry, and I turned
to my husband Michael as we were watching, because there
was a moment where like the Duchess was not giving
(46:21):
Oprah what Oprah she She wasn't being honest, she wasn't
like there was something, there was a way in which
she wasn't totally like she was skirting something. And I
looked at Oprah's face, and I'm one of the few
people who can say this, I said, I said to Michael,
I know that look. I've had that look trained on
me because when I was Oprah's guest on Super Soul
(46:45):
Sunday went devotion when that's what she wanted to talk about,
was devotion. There were any number of times during my
long conversation with her where I just kind of got
the you know, the kind of uh, yeah, I'm not
buying this look. And she was right. She was right.
She has an extraordinary bullshit detector, and I didn't know
(47:13):
that there was, you know, anything to call bullshit about.
But but the other thing I wanted to say in
terms of friendship two things. One, in terms of this
show and podcasting, I think the reason why you were
drawn to it during this time is because this form
of storytelling, this way in which we are listening and
(47:35):
receiving information, is very intimate. Well, it's it's as intimate
as reading. I think it's more intimate than watching something
because we're usually doing that with other people. Yes, and
I specifically didn't want this to be on camera. I mean,
we are seeing each other through the portal that were
but it's we are not on camera. You are hearing
(47:57):
our voices right and being voices in your ears. That's
very very uh intimate and allows for that empathy to
happen because there's nobody watching. You know, it's people who
are listening or usually uh you know, they're alone when
they're listening there in their cars, or they're taking a walk,
(48:19):
or they're working out, or they're folding laundry. Um, I
just took a walk before we were meeting because I
needed to listen to one of my own shows. And
you know, it's just that feeling of like something being
in in in your ears, that that is a very
that I find to be a very beautiful thing. Um.
(48:39):
But the other thing I wanted to say, you're just
making me think so much about friendship and going all
the way back to that first after that first morning
when you and I were hanging up, I had absolutely
no idea that I was going to do this, but
I told you, uh, something extremely personal, the reason for
(49:02):
my family's trip out to the West Coast, which I'm
comfortable sharing now all these years later, but then was
a huge vulnerability for me, which was that we were
trying to have a second child and we were, you know,
ironically enough, going through all sorts of fertility treatments. I
mean ironically because I was repeating history without even knowing it. Right, Um,
(49:25):
but that was something very few people knew. I was
sitting with you, a brand new maybe friend, you know,
maybe we would never see each other again. Um, but
there was something. And it wasn't confessional, and I wasn't
like blurting something out or spilling the beans. I was
sharing something with you, and it was something very vulnerable,
(49:47):
and it was a risk because like I knew you intuitively,
but I didn't know you know you and you know
it's possible when you share something with someone you don't
know well that they could respond in a way that
might be hurtful, which is why it's a risk and
why it's vulnerable making. But there is no true friendship
without that. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, there's the sound bite. Wow,
(50:14):
there it is. I mean, honestly, there it is. That's
exactly right, It's exactly right. And I also remember how
delicate it was because you had had health scares with Jacob,
and you had shared about them, and here you were
trying at that momentum to see, if you know, the
(50:38):
universe God's grace was going to happen in that moment
for you guys, and that it was. And and anyone
listening who has gone through fertility treatments in the amount
of hormones and the underbelly, that gentle, beautiful underbelly of
(50:59):
vulner ability that you shared with me, that's what we're
looking for. I may want to know who makes your
pretty blouse, but that's not I'm not going to build
a friendship on it. I'm just not. It's just not possible.
And I remember I felt so privileged that you trusted
me and new both that I would hold that trust.
(51:24):
That I was then trustworthy, which is again a good friend.
Those are the fundamental building blocks of what makes someone
a good friend. Trust is comfort, but trust to be
able to show that delicate, beautiful underbelly of vulnerability that
(51:47):
here you were a successful woman with a beautiful man
that you loved and this sweet guy, this little guy
who had had some health stuff and now was healthy.
And there you were saying, do I want to do
this again? How hard are we going to try for this?
(52:07):
How disappointing is that going to be? Or already probably
had been if you had gotten to that point. So
I do remember, I do remember. I remember driving home thinking,
because I want that, That's what I want. That's the
stuff I want in a friendship. That's the juice, I mean,
(52:32):
that's the that's the aliveness. And you know you and
I well, I was gonna say you and I are
both um big fans of Mark Nibo, but that is
actually not accurate. What is accurate is that I became
a fan of Marc Neipo because you gifted me in
two thousand and three with the Book of Awakening, which
(52:53):
is my favorite of his books and has become, you know,
part of my morning crag to you. Know for all
these years, and the reading this morning was actually exactly
about what we're talking about. I'm tempted to go grab
it. It It was really short. Grab it. Okay, I don't
have it. Wait wait, I was probably on my phone. Now,
(53:17):
watch this technology working for us, just when we think
technology is not good for us. Here it is. The
name of it is responsibility. True inner responsibility centers on
our willingness to give voice to whatever is happening to
us in the midst of a relationship. This is important
(53:40):
both for you and the person you are relating to.
If you are not present, there is nothing to respond to,
and love only becomes real in the world through our
ability to respond. Bringing who you are to a relationship,
being your true self gives others the opportunity to transcend
(54:02):
their limitations by acting on their love. It gives the
other person a chance to show up. If you remain voiceless,
then I can unconsciously keep living out whatever inequity or
imbalance I'm involved in with you. But once you show
your hurt or frustration or confusion or question, then I
(54:23):
have the chance to stop my unconscious participation in the
pattern of our relationship. The key to whether I will
respond to you or not often has to do with love,
the only thing that can break the inertia of old behavior.
We can be driving along the endless summer highway, locked
in some pattern that has become suffocating to you, but
(54:46):
until you are moved by some sudden wind that shows
the willow's trunk as we speed by. Until you are
moved to say, quote, I can't go on like this
end quote. I can't have the chance to say a
quote I don't want it to be like this either.
Until you break your silence, I can't have the chance
(55:07):
to say what can we do to change all this?
Often we spend so much time waiting for the other
to catch on and see our pain, getting more and
more frustrated and wounded the longer they don't. But this
is the definition of a limitation, not being able to
see what is obvious. So while we dread voicing our
fears and hurts to one another, love has no way
(55:31):
of being acted on without something truthful to respond to.
Wow as that for a full circle moment. Yeah, I
feel like now we could just sit here and talk
for the next three hours um and go deep diving
in time and place and husbands and children, work, hair
(55:53):
and glasses and old houses and beautiful places and all
the joys of our friendship. And I'm really grateful to
you today for coming on and ending with a reading
by Mark there was full circle. Thank you Danny Shapiro
for being such a good friend. And that's not some
(56:14):
sort of cloy thing, that's pretty true. So for whoever's listening,
stay safe, do what you're supposed to do, and God
bless you all. Take care. Good Friend is produced by
(56:37):
Dylan Fagin and is a production of my Heart Radio.
Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced, and performed
by Emily King. Unlogative I'm a good friend. I mean
(57:00):
I don't already it from a good Friend. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
If there's something already unlogative. I'm a good friend. Hi everybody,
it's Jamie Lee Curtis. You're listening to the Good Friend Podcast,
presented to you by I Heart Radio. It's a podcast
(00:22):
about friendship, sort of the good, the bad, and the ugly,
the triumphs of friendship, the immense connection and emotion of friendship,
the laughter and occasionally the tears. We explore it all
in an unscripted, very free form way with many, many
(00:42):
different guests, some I'm very close friends with, some I've
never met. And I hope that you will take away
from it something that connects you to your friends, and
that the ideas that we talk about can maybe be
taken into your own friendships. So sit back, or take
a walk, or however you listen, I hope you enjoy
(01:03):
it and stay tuned and the load on a good friend.
Look at what's happening here right now. Look how delighted
I am I got your beautiful package today. That was
such a gorgeous thing. Well, for the uninitiated listener, um,
(01:28):
I was raised by a woman who you know, I'm
trying to remember if my mom I always had to
write thank you notes. That was like like a given,
like absolute. But I'm trying to remember if my mother
said always bring a hostess gift or if that was
maybe my own invention. I think it was sort of mine.
(01:51):
And so, um, what Danny Shapiro, my guest here on
the Good Friend podcast, is mentioning, is that as a
hostess gift to guests, I found from my favorite little
store by the way, if any of you are looking
for a new place to spend, it's a wonderful store
called Sir slash madam Um. And it has beautiful house
(02:15):
of jay and wooden pieces and linen and tapestries. And
they happened to have handkerchiefs that's a friend. And coffee
mugs for the male guests. They got coffee mugs that
say friend. It's beautiful on the box says friend. And
(02:38):
and have you always had I mean, have you always
had that handwriting like that beautiful, beautiful, It's so distinctive,
it's so completely yours. I would know it anywhere, and
I love it so much. I mean, was that sort
of was that your mother? Was that part? Like? Was
that like penmanship? And kind of so what you all
don't also need to know, which is so amazing because
(03:00):
I'm gonna answer question and then I'm gonna stop. Is
that Danny also is a fantastic besides being a you know,
it's the words. The words become so excuse my French
effing sheep, So the hyperbole gets in my way sometimes.
Danny is a talented writer. I met her because of
(03:21):
her novels, we bonded because of her memoir, and she
also has now expanded, particularly one of her memoir into
podcasting and conversations and now travels the world doing really conversations,
really getting into the meat of the matter. So it's
(03:42):
so wonderful that she's sort of interviewing me here and
asking me about my handwriting. So here is the truth
of my handwriting, Danny Shapiro. I like my hair. I
never felt um good. I don't know about you. I mean,
we can obviously this is you know, when I was young,
(04:03):
I did not like my body. I didn't know what
I was, where I was, what where I began and ended.
I didn't have real definition at all. And if you
look back on any history of Jamie pictures of me
back in the day, you know my hair was long
and then it was short, that it was curly the thing,
and um, you know, I had my hair permed once
(04:24):
on a thing, and then I dyed it blonde for
a movie. And then my hair broke off, and for
the first time I went to a hairdresser in Beverly
Hills name jose Ebert, who had a book called Shake
Your Head, Darling, which I guess was like the whole
sort of frothy hair, and he cut my hair off.
And that was really the first beginning of it. So
(04:44):
hair was always a problem for me until I went, oh,
really right, like short hair, and the minute I get
it a little longer and I'm like, oh, maybe I'll
grow my hair, it's like the worst decision. But the
other thing was my handwriting. If you look back on
my childhood teen handwriting, I literally bent left, bent right, looped, flowery.
(05:07):
I wanted the signature my stepmother, my father's wife, had
a very distinctive handwriting, and I remember it and I
remember thinking how amazing it looked, and so over the
years I finally realized, oh, I don't write in cursive.
I print. And as soon as I started printing with
(05:29):
as you have kindly said, in some sort of way,
that has become me it has solidified or at least
established the way I write speaking of the way people right,
good segue. Huh huh. See see, I didn't even realize
we were recording from right right from the beginning. You
know what my experience is that because of the nature
(05:54):
of this, I my audient, my audience, my your mind.
You people are my mine and mine only. You know,
as you know, people have a lot of podcasts to
choose from, and so whoever has found their way here
has found their way here for a reason. And the
reason for me is that it is an unexpected, unplanned
(06:16):
conversation about friendship. So I like to just begin because
it's how friendships just begin. So you are the only
person I will speak to on my podcast who I
twitter stalked or cyber stalked or internet stalked. I wrote
you a fan letter, I remember, and I was thinking
(06:39):
about it today. Um, I was thinking about my my
novel Family History had come out. It was a new
ish but you know, it's been out for probably a
few months. And I was checking my email one morning
and there was an email from Jamie Lee Curtis, and
I was like, you know, it's sort of like the
way that people when they win mccar arthur's or they
(07:01):
find out that they've been nominated for something, and it's
like yeah, i'll right, and they hang up on the person.
I was like, yeah, sure, Like who's playing a joke
on me? And why is Jamie? And it was a
fan letter and you had, Um, I believe that you're
daughter Annie had and you were at a bookstore in
l a and you just liked the book jacket. That's
(07:22):
exactly right, a completely arresting book checket. I'm looking at
it right now in my office. It's I have only
two book jackets that I love enough to have had
posters made of them, um, to hang in my office,
and that's one of them. And it's a photograph of
a young girl who's hanging upside down from either a
balanced beam or sort of a barn beam. And it's
(07:43):
a really arresting photograph. And you are a wonderful photographer yourself,
and you collect photography, and I think that the photograph
drew you and for no question tital family history. It
was just a great jacket. Yeah, it was a great jacket.
Um it. I need to give props to Hutton's books
in Brentwood, which is long gone. Another another one bites
(08:06):
the dust. But it was a fantastic bookstore, filled with
books and readers of books. Both the staff and the
clientele were avid readers. And I'm an avid reader. I'm
not up voracious reader, and I don't read twenty four
hours a day, but I'm an avid reader. I I
(08:26):
do enjoy to read. And my teenage daughter and I
were at Dutton's and I remember we both were walking
by the new fiction and there was this picture of
this young girl hanging upside down, and I think Annie
sort of looked at it because said, oh, that looks cool,
and I grabbed it and Annie read it first, and
(08:47):
I remember she came to me and said, Mom, you
have to read this. And that hasn't it was not,
you know, it was she was a teenage young woman,
and you know, teenage hood with any of us is challenging.
And it was about a conflict in a family with
the parents. And there was another child and we had
recently had Tom who was an infant, or was a
(09:11):
young kid at the time. And I read it in
our in our country home. I know that just sounds gross,
but it's like up in the mountains it's a log cabin,
but it's a it's our country home. And I remember
I looked on the back and it it had the
you know, contact the author Danny Shapiro dot com or
whatever the through whatever. I don't I don't remember what
(09:34):
the mail address was. And I remember I wanted to
say to you, a woman obviously I had never met,
how rare that was, that the power of a book
to connect people is profound when it really lands, and
it landed for us. It opened a conversation, and I
(09:57):
was thanking you for that, because honestly, it has been struggle,
a struggle, and you know, it was a moment of grace,
and it was because you were the portal through which
that moment of grace occurred, and that was important. I
was thinking too this morning. I knew we were gonna
be talking about friendship and our friendship and friendship and
(10:18):
all things friendship, and I was thinking about sort of
the way it unfolded for us after that, because I
don't know if you remember this, but I remember everything
all right, So I'm sure you'll remember that lunch on
off of Abbot Kinney before launch. So we had a
back and forth, Um, you know, once I was convinced
actually was you. And there was a movie in the works.
(10:44):
Uh you know, family has had an option, and it
was a movie in the works and they were casting it.
And I wrote to you like one evening saying, I
wonder you loved the book. I wonder if you'd be,
you know, interested in playing the main character. You're sort
of the right, you know, you'd be amazing. And then
about two hours later I had this feeling, and the
(11:05):
feeling was, oh, no, no, no, no, no no. This
woman reached out to me human being to human being,
having had this experience of reading this novel. And she's
very famous and she's a very wonderful actor, but she
probably has people asking her for all the time. And
(11:28):
I don't want to be that person. I really don't.
And I wrote back to you and I said, disregard
that previous email you I wrote, I wrote some version
of what I just said to you, like, disregard that.
I that is not my interest in our back and
forth here. And and I think that that was actually
this like second step in our becoming friends. It wasn't
(11:51):
I didn't want anything from you. I think that's the
thing to kind of branch off from really from this
the beginning of this conversation is the idea of wanting
a friendship where you don't want something from someone, because
we're in a business where everybody wants something from everybody
(12:13):
almost always, if it's an endorsement, if it's a blurb,
if it's a can you amplify this? Now with social media?
I'm sure you people listening have seen that. It's you know,
it becomes a bit of a mutual admiration society out there.
You just want to amplify other people's work, and you
(12:34):
have this portal, you know, social media to do it with,
and we've all become adept at it. But I agree
with you. I didn't. I didn't want anything from you.
I didn't want the rights to your book. I wasn't
trying to grab that and somehow kind of turn this
nice feeling into then commerce and business together. There was
(12:57):
no agenda, no agenda at all. And and I think
that that like that feeling of you know, especially when
people meet each other as grown ups, um with a
lot of history behind us. You know, I think I
really treasure the handful of friendships that I've made in
recent years. You know, there's that expression you can't make
(13:19):
an old friend. You can't make an old friend, you know.
It's like, so I have old friends that stay in
my life that might not be people that I would
become friends with today, but they've they've known me. They
knew me when I had you know, when I was
a creature of the handwriting going in every direction of
you know, shapeless creature, but going into just especially in
(13:42):
a way when we know each other's stories in a
certain way of public stories, right, And I think I
just had a very strong feeling of nah. Right. And
so then I was going to be in l A
and actually you pitched me up at my hotel. I
was with my husband and very small sun at the time,
(14:03):
my son I think is probably six. And you picked
me up and said a load of my boys, and
we drove to Venice, to this street on Venice called
Abbott Kinney that has since become like truly one of
my favorite walking streets anywhere in the world. And we
I think we had I think we had coffee or tea.
(14:24):
And then we were walking on at Kinney. I remember
a couple of things. One thing I remember is that
we were passing by some maintenance worker, sanitation guys who were,
you know, taking out the garbage in and they recognized you,
and they shouted across this empty lot at you, like
I love your work, and you shouted back, I love
your work. And I just thought like, wow, okay, all right, um.
(14:49):
And then there was a stray cat in the courtyard
of the place where we were sitting and having our tea,
and you walked over to a table u where there
were a couple of people having their breakfast, and you said,
excuse me, and they looked up at you, like yeah,
and you said, could I take your milk for the
cat and just put it in my sure? So they
(15:13):
were just all of these kind of I just was
kind of witnessed too. And I know you don't like compliments,
so I'll I'll move through that. No, I'm I'm just
I appreciate everything you've said. It's not like I don't
like a good compliment. We all do. I was witnessing
your generous humanity and your absolute determination to not let
(15:35):
your celebrity be a barrier between you and other human beings.
And I appreciate that and I definitely try to do
so in my daily life. I do I do want
to be a worker among workers, and I do I
remember the cat Um. I don't think I remember the
(15:56):
the maintenance workers, but I will can firm that that occurred,
even though I don't have a distinct memory of it.
What I remember was we were walking down this street
and we passed a jewelry shop and you know, there
was pretty you know, don't know why jewelry shops are.
You know, you look at things and you're like, oh,
(16:16):
that's pretty. Oh yeah, look at that. Oh that's pretty. Yeah,
oh thing. And I said something like, well, yeah, but
I don't I only I only wear one person's jewelry.
And you said, what do you mean. I said, well,
I'm neighbors and a very close friend of a jeweler
ning Kathy Waterman, and I am loyal and I and
(16:41):
I said, you know, I'm wearing my child charm and
it has my children's name on it and it's from her.
And you looked at me, and you went like this,
and I'm now explaining to the people who are not
watching us. Um. She pointed to her ears, her hand
and her neck and she went Kathy Waterman, Kathy Waterman,
Kathy Waterman. And in that moment. That was because Kathy
(17:04):
Waterman had been a new friend through my daughter and
her daughter, and I was incredibly loyal and loved Kathy.
She's also a Lady of the Canyon. I mean, she
is the sort of hippie goddess that we all want
to be, incredibly smart with a lawyer and jewelry designer.
And I just remember like, oh, this is gonna be
(17:27):
so fun because I knew I was going to connect
your dot. I knew it. It was just in that moment.
And then there was another thing that happened about photography,
and we were talking about photography. So in one hundred
yard walk, so many things that mattered to both of us,
so many things that connected to I mean, people don't
wear jewelry unless it speaks to them. It wasn't like
(17:51):
you were fancy women who are changing their big stuff
daily to go with their outfit. You know, these are
we wear in touch every day. There are talismans of
our lives. And here we were two brand new friends.
And what I loved was we were sort of adult
women and we were extending ourselves to say to each other,
(18:13):
do you want to be friends? It was no different
than two little kids meeting in the sandbox going well,
doan't be my pen my friend? Well? If I do,
you you know you we just little kids do it.
Teenagers do it in that way. Hey, what's yours? Cool? Thanks?
(18:36):
I think one of the things that's interesting is like
little kids, Like you've watched your kids, you know, grow
up and have to make friends, and I've watched my
son grow up and make friends or not, you know.
And one of the things that's interesting about like kid
friendships is like whatever draws little kids to each other,
whatever that energy is or what whatever that kind of
(18:58):
um chem history is that can morphin change, right, you know.
I mean Jacob was very close with a couple of
kids in in grade school and up until middle school
that weren't necessarily going to be his you know, like
sort of life long, like they'll always be friends, but
(19:19):
they kind of have taken different paths in life. And
I think there's something that happens when you're pretty fully
baked as uh, you know, a human. You know, you're
pretty like you've come out of the kiln and you
know you're kind of I mean, hopefully we always grow
and change, and hopefully there's always softness and malleability. But
(19:41):
you're You're pretty much who you are, and your losses
and your successes and your loves and your griefs have
all formed you, and so you're I think it's a different,
maybe deeper kind of recognition of like, oh, like fellow traveler.
And the opposite happens to like whenever I'm in New
York or anywhere urban, usually because I live in the
middle of nowhere, so I don't pass by people, I'll
(20:03):
see someone on the street and sometimes the words that
go through my mind is, oh, give that person a
wide berth, you know, like not good energy, like not.
It goes both directions. And I think that that happened
that day, and that was just so cool, and we
did have all of these like kind of really amazing, surprising,
(20:25):
very particular connections. I'm a good friend. We'll be right
back with more good friend after this quick break, so
stick around, friend. I don't know what drew us to
(20:50):
each other. What drew me to you was your work.
It started with the word. It started with your imagination,
your brain, the way you spoke of family, whatever distillation
that novel was of whatever family issues and stuff that
you had either experienced yourself, or bore witness to, or
(21:13):
heard second hand. It comes out through the beautiful creation
of the idea, which you know the John Steinbeck who
says that there are nothing great was ever created by
two people. That it's the miracle of creation takes place
in one mind. Then it can be built on and expanded.
(21:35):
But nothing is invented by two people. It's not possible
because it has to come from one point. And to me,
I was drawn to the emotional reaction I had to
the work that you wrote and then reached out to
(21:56):
say thank you for it. We no attachment, never thought
I'd meet you, you know, kind of said, and then
it began, and it's you know, and then it began,
and then it began because then it's an email, and
then it's I'm going to be in l a and
And the truth is, if we both hadn't leaned in,
(22:17):
we wouldn't be sitting here today talking to each other,
so many years later, so many lives later, because we
leaned in and whatever we trusted in each other in
that moment we met for lunch, we met not even
for lunch. It was, as you said, it was like
a coffee in it. I think we were going to
be together at the most two hours. You know. I
(22:39):
think it was you were doing something in l A
and I was doing and it was like, oh, I'm
in l A. Great, let's just go grab a coffee
and get to know each other. And this is a
beautiful example of that, how we have gotten to know
each other over the years. Um one in particular. You know,
I've I wanted this show show it's such a weird word. Um.
(23:05):
I'm still trying to learn how to talk about what
we're doing because it's happening here, and then of course
it'll people will listen to it later and then you
know what I mean. It's it's a weird world. You've
been doing it for a long time. I'm new at
this part of it, and so I'm learning the language
and the feelings around the language. I very much didn't
(23:26):
want this to be and I have no issue with
people who do do this, but I did not want
this to be about selling things. Um. I felt I didn't.
I didn't ask anybody because of anything that I wasn't
going to people saying well, you have a new book,
and I'd love to have you come and talk about
your new book, Like I don't people's work are going
(23:49):
to come up in conversation because it's the nature. But
I also that's why I didn't want to introduce people
like my next guest is this and has written this that,
but it comes out naturally, so it's it's germane to uh.
You know. A connect the dot that I think is important,
which is you wrote a book called Devotion, which many people,
(24:13):
myself included was very um moved slashed helped by because
you explored as a great memoirist, does you take your
own experience. You go into it, but you take us
with you. And so it's such a great opportunity because
(24:34):
it makes you then look at your own life and
your own family and your own so we go with you.
But it could be my family, it could be so
and so is family. And that's the beauty of a
memoir is that it brings us into yours and then
it connects us back to our own and yours had
to do with faith and searching. Can you just explain
(24:58):
the book for a second so that I can explain
that the context I'm going to talk about, just so
that I don't do a poor example of talking about
what your book is about no thanks um devotion. I mean,
I had no I had I was nobody was more
surprised than I was when I started writing what I
guess was, you know, a spiritual memoir. When I realized
that that was something I was going to be doing,
(25:19):
I was sort of horrified because I don't read them.
Uh it sounded boring to me, like, you know, spending
the next eighteen months of my life contemplating the big questions,
how is there? How is their drama in that? Like
what's going to make anybody want to turn the pages?
And and really, I mean it came to be because
(25:41):
my son, so many things come back down to you know,
my son is that he started asking me questions when
he was a little kid. And those questions were what
do you believe? And what do you think happens when
we die? And um, do you believe in God? And
I was raised with a lot of certainty about all that,
(26:01):
surrounded by a lot of certainty. I was raised in
an Orthodox Jewish home, and I um, I felt like
he deserved a mother who had thought deeply about all that.
And I couldn't say I had I had opted out
and I had sort of run as quickly and as
far away from, you know, any of the big spiritual
questions as I could. And now I was sort of
(26:23):
in early midlife, and here was this little kid who
I wanted. You know, it's not even that he wanted answers,
and I wasn't looking for answers. But when when I
finally started writing Devotion, I had two things in mind.
One is that I wanted to live inside the questions.
I did not want to leave my own backyard. Essentially,
I didn't want to go to India. I didn't want
(26:43):
to go to Israel. I didn't want to go to Tibet.
I had the feeling that the answers weren't like out
there to be grasped, but that they were that if
I opened my eyes, and if I opened my ears,
that a lot would be revealed to me. And that's
and that was the kind of astonishment for me in
(27:03):
writing that book, is that that's what happened. And I
live in the middle of nowhere, and some of the
greatest spiritual teachers of our time like practically wandered into
my backyard. I mean that's an exaggeration, but yeah, and
became friends with you through that process. An utterly, utterly
life changing book for me more than any other book
(27:23):
of mine, because you know, I don't write. I don't
go on journeys ever, so that I can write a
book about the journey, like I have a burning question
of some sort and inquiry, a desire to know something,
and the only way I know how to explore that thing,
and the only way that I can give myself permission
(27:45):
to explore that thing is by putting pen to paper.
So I write the book in order to go on
the journey. In a way I mean, it's it's I mean,
there are some terrific books that are written sort of
as like I'm going to spend a year the you know,
the year of living in this way. That wasn't what
I wanted to do. But the other thing that another
(28:07):
way that that book was life changing for me is
it cured me of my terminal specialness. It cured me
of my I mean, I until devotion. I was terrified
of public speaking. Had to take a sedative if I
was giving a reading in front of twenty people in
(28:28):
a smokey bar in the east village, I had to
medicate myself because I was going to die. I mean,
my heart would pound in my chest, my palms would sweat.
I was so frightened. Um. And then Devotion, the process
of like that exploration, it allowed me to, you know,
(28:49):
to like I now can get up in front of
thousands of people and I really am not. I'm I'm fine,
I'm not I'm not afraid because they're me and I
am them, and it doesn't feel I mean, I'm aware
that what I do is put into language and into
form what we all feel. When I'm writing a memoir,
(29:12):
it's using my own life as a laboratory when I'm
writing fiction. And you know, and it's interesting because your
response to Family History, which is a novel. I actually
think that fiction is more revealing than memoir in many
ways because the writer is not as in control of
it we were. You know, we're pulling from the universe
all around us and things that are not like very
(29:36):
conscious of in order to be able to to make
a world. We're making a world instead of in a sense,
reporting on the world. And when you made Devotion, Um,
you were going to UH Writer's conference in Idaho, and
(29:56):
I was going to be in conversation with you as
we are here now simply Um opening doors and letting
you walk through them in the way you just so
eloquently did about your process of that book and the
process of writing devotion and the surprise you found yourself
(30:17):
doing it. So I we have done this dance before,
you and me, and it's with someone who has that
sort of depth of you know, the sort of trifecta
of the ability to metabolize something in the present, to
be able to live in the middle of the question,
and also the sort of divinity aspect of something that
(30:40):
you've worked out or the book helped you work out about,
you know, why am I effing here? Like? Why am
I here? Um? So for me it was very easy
because I just literally it was like, okay, I'll open
that door. And then we went through that door, and
you took us all explained where we were in that door.
So but what I remember was the trip there, the
(31:05):
flying there. That's what I was thinking about when you
were saying that, because we were both nervous flyers, um,
and we both have children and husbands and friends, and
you know, there is a release of control in a
(31:25):
big way in travel, and we all probably every person
listening to us today has in their lives gotten on
an airplane. And here we were going on a small
airplane to a small area in the mountains to do
this talk together. And yet there was this there was turbulence,
(31:47):
and it was not a terrible flight, but it was
it was a little bomby. What I recall is is
the pilot several times that particular airport is surrounded by mountains.
It's like one of those airports, and uh, you know,
there's not a lot of room for error. Uh. And
(32:09):
I remember the pilot I think trying to come in
back up again a couple of times. Yes, that sort
of deciding not this landing, noop noopnop, and saying I'm
going to try one more time and if we can't land,
then they then werenna go to another place. And and
it was it was t M I for me, Yeah
(32:31):
something a good friend. We'll be right back with more
good friend after this quick break. I don't know what
I remember as we held hands. I remember we looked
(32:52):
at each other. I believe we said the meta prayer
to each other. You know, I'm I know strangers hold
hands when they're nervous. Um. I used to refer to
people as my airplane wife or my airplane husband and
be sit down to a stranger and be like, oh, hello,
you're my airplane husband. How fun. Hi, I'm Jamie. We're
going to be married. And I may grab your leg
(33:13):
or arm and you know you can't. I mean, in
my world, you can't help it. I just can't help
my my, my sister Kelly, um My the o G
best friend. You know, good friend is my sister Kelly,
who would call it making friends and she would say
(33:34):
to me, did you make any friends to day, Janie?
Because I would. You know, there's my airplane husband. He's
sitting next to me, and before we're landing, we have
downloaded the connection and usually there is a connect the dot.
There usually is something that has made that moment together.
Often I will never see them again. Occasionally I get
(33:57):
an occasional text, Hey, Jamie, it's Evan, your airplane husband
from Texas. How are you doing? How's everything? I'm going
to be in l A. Do you want to get
grab a coffee? And most of the time that doesn't happen. Um,
but in those moments I remember. It's funny. I remembered
it this morning when I was preparing and not preparing
(34:20):
like you know, I wasn't like cramming reading every book
you've written, but I was thinking about our friendship and
our connection and what makes a good friend and that
level of trust that we felt. And in that moment
of being a little it was a little funky. It
was just a moment of this is a little funkier
(34:40):
than I even and I'm pretty, you know, water off
a duck's back kind of girl. And it was a
moment and I remember looking in our eyes and that
we were we you know, Let me be safe, may
be happy, may be manly with ease. And I've the
only thing you need to know about the meta prayer
(35:02):
for those uninitiated meta prayers who just received it. I
have because I couldn't remember, I switched it to s words.
So I said, I have changed the meta prayer. And
I may get struck by lightning when I leave my
nature of prayer that it changes over time. Okay, thank you,
(35:24):
Danny Shapiro just saved me from feeling like laying in
bed tonight going like ah um, I say, may I
be safe, May I be satisfied, May I be strong,
May I be steady. M hm. So I have metabolized
that prayer. Into four says, and I do that prayer
(35:49):
for I do it for myself. I do it from
my people, the closest people, UM, my husband and you know,
my immediate family, my children, my sister, my siblings, my family.
Then my friends are the next one. Then my older friends,
(36:09):
the people who are um needing more support right now,
who are vulnerable, and then other people who are vulnerable,
people who are sick, people who are struggling with illnesses.
Then I go to people who I'm in conflict with.
I then go to the general public, the world at large,
(36:30):
strangers and UM. For me, that's how it works, is
that I I and I do that daily with other
sort of readings and meditations. Um and. But that's how
I apply. But I remember looking like I remember it
like it was yesterday, holding hands, looking at each other,
(36:52):
deep into each other's eyes, saying those words, giving each
other the support and comfort. Um. And that's support and comfort.
Isn't that what a good friend is? Ultimately, at the
end of the day, we both don't live near each other.
We're never going to be those kind of girl friends
(37:13):
because it's just physically impossible and we're not those people anyway.
I think though, that it's a mark of a true
friendship when you can pick up where you left off,
and you know, when you don't live you know they're
there are friendships that are like within community. Um. You know,
I have friends who live in my county in northwestern Connecticut,
(37:38):
and I see them probably most frequently, or during this
year of the pandemic, one of my best and oldest friends,
we have a Saturday evening six o'clock date that has
pretty much been like a sacred we're gonna we're gonna
zoom and spend a little time together. Um. But when
(37:59):
we're sort of you know, far flung, and we find
ourselves in the same place, or we get on a
call um, as as you and I have done, you know,
like like a really early morning call. I remember, well,
actually there are two things I want to say. I
was gonna say. I remember when I made my most
(38:20):
recent discovery about family secrets that actually ended up inspiring
the podcast that I that I host, um and and
my book Inheritance. Um, none of that had happened yet.
I was meeting you for coffee at the Brentwood Country Mart.
You know. Actually I remember at another dinner with you
(38:42):
know you and some of your girlfriends who have some
of them have become girlfriends of mine over the years.
At the Brentwood Country Mart, at this place that I
really love called farm Shop, which I've got to say,
I get their emails every day farm Shop, Santa Monica
and it just or Brentwood farm Shop, farm Shop, and
it's like I have such l a like longing, especially
(39:04):
during the pandemic, every time I get one of farm
shops emails, like with their with their takeout menus. But
that's an aside. Um. I remember meeting you at the
Brentwood Country and we were walking around and we I
started to tell you that I had discovered, through taking
a DNA test, that my dad, my beloved, my everything
(39:26):
dad who raised me, had not been my biological father,
which was something I had never known anything about. UM.
And I was in a state of still very much
reeling from it. And I remember you got very focused,
(39:47):
very quiet. We sat outside at a picnic outside at
like a chirp and chicken picnic table, um, and you
just were so I mean talk about support and comfort.
You got it, um instantly. You had you knew me,
(40:11):
you had read enough of my work, you knew what
that I mean talk about like the kind of radical
empathy of that kind of moment, because you know, my experience,
although there are quite a lot of us who have
had this experience, as it turns out, my experience is
not something that everybody can you know, easily relate to.
(40:32):
It was one of my biggest challenges in writing the book,
you know, I mean, in other books of mine, I
write about my father's death in a car accident. While
anybody can connect to that like that could happen to
any of us. I write about my son's illness when
he was a baby and almost losing him. Anyone is
going to be able to empathize with almost losing a child.
(40:53):
I discovered that my father wasn't my biological father from
taking a DNA test, and then I found out that
my parents had fertility problems. They went to a sperm bank,
and my biological father just spurned on her. And then
you know, like what you know, And I encountered a
lot of like what you know, a lot and people
(41:13):
wanting to put band aids on it, people wanting to say, oh,
your father is still your father, you know, like just
like absolute lack of like what's the big deal. You've
got a great life. Look at you. I mean, you
should just be grateful. You've got great genes. It turned
out fine. I got so much of that, Jamie. And
what end or just people wanting to fix it? Fix me,
(41:37):
fix my pain, fix fix the trauma, make it better.
You like just sat there and trained your attention on
me and your compassion, and you asked me questions and uh,
you know you you you got me to just tell
(41:59):
you the story. Um, and it was a gift. And
then we had to meet some other friends for lunch
and and and then we we sort of stopped. But
during the lunch I felt you and I wasn't talking
about it. I wasn't talking about it in the larger group,
and I felt you. I felt like you looking at
me and kind of nodding and taking it in, and
(42:20):
that it was something that you were really deeply processing. Well,
you called it radical empathy. I think if you, if
we were looking for new descriptions or descriptors of good friend,
what does it mean to be a good friend is
that you have to have radical empathy. That's the what
a good friend has. Um. You have to remember you
(42:44):
had written a book called Devotion much of it dedicated
to your father, much of a dedicated two also experiencing wondering,
asking the hard questions why am I a blonde, blue
eyed girl in a Jewish family? Where the F did
(43:08):
I come from? Like, it wasn't you posing that question
of the connection to your devotion to his devotion to
the religion that you, as you said you were raised
in that home of Orthodoxy you still describe in that
book looking in the mirror and going really and so
(43:32):
it wasn't a surprise to me at all. I remember thinking, oh,
of course, and the leaning in. I think we lean
in together, and I think, you know, this show, whatever
it is, it was born out of the pandemic it was.
(43:52):
It wasn't like I was, hmm, I need something to do.
I've got plenty to do. That wasn't it. It was
there's this song on good Friend by Emily King, and
I play her music a lot, and I remember hearing
that song on you know, repeat and saying, oh, I
(44:12):
need to do a show about friendship and call it
good for the good Friend show, like the good Friend podcast.
And again it wasn't like my big need to be
like in the podcast world, and I'm going to get
in there. I really I'm not that person. I don't
spend a lot of time listening to almost anything. I'm busy,
(44:33):
and I'm not that person. And yet the questions started
coming up, what is a good friend? And your description
today of radical empathy is a very good descriptor another
good in the beautiful offering bowl that this show is
(44:55):
by the end of it, all of the different people's
ideas of what it means to be a good friend.
Um In that moment, I remembered everything about that moment
and knew everything that had led up to it, because I,
at that point was a good friend of yours, had
(45:15):
explored devotion with you, had opened those doors with you.
And so it also was heartbreaking to watch you feel,
not intellectualize, but feel that your eyes were brimmed with tears,
beautiful blue eyes just pouring tears down your face gently.
(45:37):
It wasn't a big histrionic moment. It's a big, big
thing to learn what what what you just said about
not intellectualizing it, but feeling it was the like the
difference between what I had been doing up until then,
(45:59):
here's trying to make sense of something that didn't make
sense right um. Recently, I watched Oprah Winfrey's interview with
with Megan Markle and and Prince Harry or the Duchess
of Sussex and Prince and Prince Harry, and I turned
to my husband Michael as we were watching, because there
was a moment where like the Duchess was not giving
(46:21):
Oprah what Oprah she She wasn't being honest, she wasn't
like there was something, there was a way in which
she wasn't totally like she was skirting something. And I
looked at Oprah's face, and I'm one of the few
people who can say this, I said, I said to Michael,
I know that look. I've had that look trained on
me because when I was Oprah's guest on Super Soul
(46:45):
Sunday went devotion when that's what she wanted to talk about,
was devotion. There were any number of times during my
long conversation with her where I just kind of got
the you know, the kind of uh, yeah, I'm not
buying this look. And she was right. She was right.
She has an extraordinary bullshit detector, and I didn't know
(47:13):
that there was, you know, anything to call bullshit about.
But but the other thing I wanted to say in
terms of friendship two things. One, in terms of this
show and podcasting, I think the reason why you were
drawn to it during this time is because this form
of storytelling, this way in which we are listening and
(47:35):
receiving information, is very intimate. Well, it's it's as intimate
as reading. I think it's more intimate than watching something
because we're usually doing that with other people. Yes, and
I specifically didn't want this to be on camera. I mean,
we are seeing each other through the portal that were
but it's we are not on camera. You are hearing
(47:57):
our voices right and being voices in your ears. That's
very very uh intimate and allows for that empathy to
happen because there's nobody watching. You know, it's people who
are listening or usually uh you know, they're alone when
they're listening there in their cars, or they're taking a walk,
(48:19):
or they're working out, or they're folding laundry. Um, I
just took a walk before we were meeting because I
needed to listen to one of my own shows. And
you know, it's just that feeling of like something being
in in in your ears, that that is a very
that I find to be a very beautiful thing. Um.
(48:39):
But the other thing I wanted to say, you're just
making me think so much about friendship and going all
the way back to that first after that first morning
when you and I were hanging up, I had absolutely
no idea that I was going to do this, but
I told you, uh, something extremely personal, the reason for
(49:02):
my family's trip out to the West Coast, which I'm
comfortable sharing now all these years later, but then was
a huge vulnerability for me, which was that we were
trying to have a second child and we were, you know,
ironically enough, going through all sorts of fertility treatments. I
mean ironically because I was repeating history without even knowing it. Right, Um,
(49:25):
but that was something very few people knew. I was
sitting with you, a brand new maybe friend, you know,
maybe we would never see each other again. Um, but
there was something. And it wasn't confessional, and I wasn't
like blurting something out or spilling the beans. I was
sharing something with you, and it was something very vulnerable,
(49:47):
and it was a risk because like I knew you intuitively,
but I didn't know you know you and you know
it's possible when you share something with someone you don't
know well that they could respond in a way that
might be hurtful, which is why it's a risk and
why it's vulnerable making. But there is no true friendship
without that. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, there's the sound bite. Wow,
(50:14):
there it is. I mean, honestly, there it is. That's
exactly right, It's exactly right. And I also remember how
delicate it was because you had had health scares with Jacob,
and you had shared about them, and here you were
trying at that momentum to see, if you know, the
(50:38):
universe God's grace was going to happen in that moment
for you guys, and that it was. And and anyone
listening who has gone through fertility treatments in the amount
of hormones and the underbelly, that gentle, beautiful underbelly of
(50:59):
vulner ability that you shared with me, that's what we're
looking for. I may want to know who makes your
pretty blouse, but that's not I'm not going to build
a friendship on it. I'm just not. It's just not possible.
And I remember I felt so privileged that you trusted
me and new both that I would hold that trust.
(51:24):
That I was then trustworthy, which is again a good friend.
Those are the fundamental building blocks of what makes someone
a good friend. Trust is comfort, but trust to be
able to show that delicate, beautiful underbelly of vulnerability that
(51:47):
here you were a successful woman with a beautiful man
that you loved and this sweet guy, this little guy
who had had some health stuff and now was healthy.
And there you were saying, do I want to do
this again? How hard are we going to try for this?
(52:07):
How disappointing is that going to be? Or already probably
had been if you had gotten to that point. So
I do remember, I do remember. I remember driving home thinking,
because I want that, That's what I want. That's the
stuff I want in a friendship. That's the juice, I mean,
(52:32):
that's the that's the aliveness. And you know you and
I well, I was gonna say you and I are
both um big fans of Mark Nibo, but that is
actually not accurate. What is accurate is that I became
a fan of Marc Neipo because you gifted me in
two thousand and three with the Book of Awakening, which
(52:53):
is my favorite of his books and has become, you know,
part of my morning crag to you. Know for all
these years, and the reading this morning was actually exactly
about what we're talking about. I'm tempted to go grab
it. It It was really short. Grab it. Okay, I don't
have it. Wait wait, I was probably on my phone. Now,
(53:17):
watch this technology working for us, just when we think
technology is not good for us. Here it is. The
name of it is responsibility. True inner responsibility centers on
our willingness to give voice to whatever is happening to
us in the midst of a relationship. This is important
(53:40):
both for you and the person you are relating to.
If you are not present, there is nothing to respond to,
and love only becomes real in the world through our
ability to respond. Bringing who you are to a relationship,
being your true self gives others the opportunity to transcend
(54:02):
their limitations by acting on their love. It gives the
other person a chance to show up. If you remain voiceless,
then I can unconsciously keep living out whatever inequity or
imbalance I'm involved in with you. But once you show
your hurt or frustration or confusion or question, then I
(54:23):
have the chance to stop my unconscious participation in the
pattern of our relationship. The key to whether I will
respond to you or not often has to do with love,
the only thing that can break the inertia of old behavior.
We can be driving along the endless summer highway, locked
in some pattern that has become suffocating to you, but
(54:46):
until you are moved by some sudden wind that shows
the willow's trunk as we speed by. Until you are
moved to say, quote, I can't go on like this
end quote. I can't have the chance to say a
quote I don't want it to be like this either.
Until you break your silence, I can't have the chance
(55:07):
to say what can we do to change all this?
Often we spend so much time waiting for the other
to catch on and see our pain, getting more and
more frustrated and wounded the longer they don't. But this
is the definition of a limitation, not being able to
see what is obvious. So while we dread voicing our
fears and hurts to one another, love has no way
(55:31):
of being acted on without something truthful to respond to.
Wow as that for a full circle moment. Yeah, I
feel like now we could just sit here and talk
for the next three hours um and go deep diving
in time and place and husbands and children, work, hair
(55:53):
and glasses and old houses and beautiful places and all
the joys of our friendship. And I'm really grateful to
you today for coming on and ending with a reading
by Mark there was full circle. Thank you Danny Shapiro
for being such a good friend. And that's not some
(56:14):
sort of cloy thing, that's pretty true. So for whoever's listening,
stay safe, do what you're supposed to do, and God
bless you all. Take care. Good Friend is produced by
(56:37):
Dylan Fagin and is a production of my Heart Radio.
Our theme song, good Friend is written, produced, and performed
by Emily King. Unlogative I'm a good friend. I mean
(57:00):
I don't already it from a good Friend. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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