February 20, 2023 • 47 mins
Can you make space for the whole truth in your life? The whole truth *of* your life? This week, best-selling author Alex Elle talks about the post-partum period after the launch of her newest book, and how her healing is intertwined with hearing the truth - the whole truth - about her own life.
In this episode we cover:
- Why one of Alex’s friends told her she stop hoarding her stories
- How owning your own story - and your own healing - impacts everyone around you
- The intersections of writing, healing, and grief
- How to give yourself permission to heal from the same thing more than once
- Why learning to slow down is the key to self-healing
Notable quote:
“No one taught me how to be a mother. No one taught me how to be warm and nurturing.
I had to figure that out on my own. No one taught me how to hold space and not try to fix someone's tears. I had to figure it out on my own. I think part of my healing and my grief work is (exploring): ‘What did I need that I didn't get?’” - Alex Elle
About our guest:
Alexandra Elle is a New York Times Bestselling author, wellness educator, and certified Breathwork coach. Her work has been featured by a wide range of media outlets, including The New York Times, NPR, Good Morning America, Essence, MindBodyGreen, Forbes, and many others. She teaches workshops and leads retreats centered around writing-to-heal and self-care. Find her on social media @alex_elle, and at alexelle.com
Additional resources
Every month I host a live video Q&A session. If you’ve ever wished you could talk to me directly, this is by far the easiest way to do it. All the information is at my patreon page, right here. Hope to see you there each month.
Get in touch:
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.
Have a question, comment, or a topic you’d like us to cover? Message us at megandevine.co
For more information, including clinical training and consulting, visit us at www.megandevine.co
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Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s OK That You’re Not OK and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I remember speaking with my therapist and she was saying,
is that the truth? And I said yeah, She goes,
is that the whole truth though, and she goes, you
don't have to say it to me, but make sure
you're saying the whole truth to yourself. This is here after,
and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author of the best
selling book It's Okay that You're Not Okay. This week
(00:22):
on the show, best selling author Alex L joins us
to talk about her new book and what healing really means.
That big broad discussion coming up right after this first break.
Before we get started, one quick note. While we cover
(00:44):
a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support for
the licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
to your work. Hey friends, So if you know me
at all, you know I'm a huge fan of writing
as a process for self discovery, for processing and making
(01:08):
general sense of the world. Writers who write for their
own self care tend to be really cool people. Best
Selling author Alex L has a long history of writing
and healing, stretching way back to her childhood. She teaches
workshops and writing to heal. She hosted the podcast Hey
Girl and still co host the podcast Daily Walk. Her
(01:29):
books include After the Rain, Gentle, Reminders for Healing, Courage
and Self Love, Notes from a Wanderer, and her new
book How We Heal. I told you she's been writing
for healing for a really long time. In today's show,
we cover a big range of territory, from motherhood to
community healing to the incredible power of telling yourself the
(01:50):
truth about your own life. I hope you enjoy it. Alex,
Welcome to the show. I am so glad to speak
with you today. There's so much we can talk about,
but I think one of the places that I would
love to start is with writing itself. One of the
favorite things that I learned about you as I was
(02:11):
preparing for our time together, it was you said that
you wrote your first book all of those years ago
because a friend of yours said you should stop hoarding
your stories. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, So,
first of all, thanks for having me. I can't wait
to dive into this chat with you. So. I've always
been a writer always. Um. I'm the only child, so
(02:32):
I used storytelling and stuff as a kid. Often, I
don't know if you remember, like the little karaoke machines
that had the microphone externally and then you could like
put a tape in and record yourself. So I used to.
I used to do that with my story. So I
would have like these novella style sound stories on tape,
(02:53):
because that's just what I did. And so I like,
if those still exists somewhere, they could be really inter stay.
Oh my god, they would be gold, totally gold. Okay.
So I've always been a writer. I've always used writing
as the self soothing tool, as storytelling tool, as a
boredom tool. And it wasn't until I started doing my
(03:16):
deep healing work or trying to around in that span
where I learned the benefits of writing to heal, writing
to recap or to purge, but really to figure out
and and become more self aware and more self accountable
and more self trusting. And so when I had stepped
(03:37):
into that realm of my writing, I started writing notes
to self and poetry. And a friend of mine said,
you know, stop hoarding your stories and your happiness. You
never know who might need your voice. She was older
than me, and I believe that was her her healing
wisdom shining through because I hadn't quite gotten there yet,
and I'm like, who would want to read a book
(03:59):
from me? I was twenty three when I wrote my
first book. I'm thirty three now. That was ten years ago,
and she said, you never know. And I did it.
And along with you know, my then boyfriend now husband,
his support, and a couple other friends who were in
my corner, I did it. I self published my first
book and it was really just for me. But I
(04:21):
think universe, God's Spirit had other I mean clearly had
other plans, because I am five books in three journals
in and teaching this work for a living, and I
just think it's interesting how when we let our stories
and our healing take root in our lives in new ways,
it can have this deeply overwhelming impact on our community.
(04:43):
And that's what happened, yeah, which is amazing. Like I
love that orientation or that foundation of I write this
way for myself first, right, and then letting that notes
to self, which is that that starting place for you,
letting those that note to self be a gift to
the world to see where other people like where that
(05:04):
overlapping then diagram of self is in the readership. I
just think there's something deeply beautiful about like feeling less
alone in our stories too, which is valuable. It's totally valuable.
Sticking with sort of craft of writing for a second,
I mean, I've been a writer much like you, like
my entire life writing to myself, and I wish I
(05:25):
could find those journals from when I was eleven, mixture
of awe and horror, probably for myself, but when I
teach writing as well, A lot of what I hear
back is the writing saved me sentiment. What does that
mean for you? Does that resonate for you? Like writing
saved me? What does that? What does that even mean?
Writing not only saved me, but it changed me. It
(05:47):
changed my relationship with myself. It allowed me to actually
start listening to myself. So something that I do a lot,
especially with my students and clients who may be kind
of intimidated by writing. This is okay, you don't want
to go to the page yet, that's fine, but voice
note journal and then go back and listen to yourself,
(06:07):
listen to your own words. And I think that that's
really how I found the harmony with my writing practice
and with my healing practice is not only writing, but
listening to my writing or listening to my own thoughts
before taking it to my writing. So yeah, it's saved me,
(06:28):
it changed me, and I mean it has shown me
a lot about the possibility. I mean, my work is
deeply rooted in healing and self awareness and less about
self improvement and self help and more about self nurturing,
like how do we want to show up in our
lives for ourselves so that we can then trickle down
(06:50):
and support our communities, And so that in itself is
like game changing, you know. And so that's what writing
has offered me. It's been multifaceted. I love that you
have to listen to yourself thing, and I think that's
why a lot of people don't write, because it's really
hard to lie to yourself on the page. I mean
(07:10):
you can try, but then you'll be like, oh that,
like that's literally a lie. So okay, yeah, you can
see it when you do it, like it's oh yeah, man. Yeah.
I remember reading that you said that you have your
your students do notes to self as an exercise and
that talking to yourself in that way is often the
(07:30):
hardest thing for people. Because I think like you you
can't lie to yourself and you have to listen, and
then you have that knowledge, and what are you going
to do with it? Once you hear yourself tell yourself
the truth, then it's a conscious effort to ignore that
truth or to find ways to live into it. I
don't really have anywhere to go with that, because like
(07:52):
I feel that in myself too, as a writer who
writes for myself as well as for public consumption. Like
there's that self and other thing about writing. There was
a there was a post you you put up on
Instagram a few months ago now, I think soon after
your your last book hit the New York Times bestseller
list of like I am exhausted and I don't want
(08:15):
to play this. I don't want to play this game anymore.
By everybody, it's been fun right like literally by Yeah.
So there's like there's always I feel like for writers,
there's there's always speaking for myself here, there's always that
those two faces of the act of writing. There's the
(08:36):
way that we right to serve ourselves on our own healing,
and there's the healing work that we put out into
the world. And m hm, oh, you know, it's it's
emotionally exhausting before you know we started. I told you
you asked me how today was, because he's been great.
I just woke up from a nap, and you know,
just I have literally given myself permission to slow down,
(09:00):
and just coming off of a book tour and press
and my creating a book is I have three human
children and lots of book children. So I often joke
like making a book is like having a child. In
a way, it's a rebirth. Every time I write a
new book, I feel rebored, just like every time I
(09:21):
have a new baby. I feel like a whole shedding
is happening right and I'm in my postpartum book period.
I know that sounds so extra and over the top,
but I really feel like it's time to do nothing
for three months. It's time to settle, rest, recalibrate, and
(09:41):
then find your words. And I don't feel bad about
it at all. You can't keep giving from empty. I
love that analogy of postpartum the postpartum period after a
book launch. It's like there is so much work that
happens behind the scenes before you even start type yes,
(10:01):
and then so much work after the baby comes out
into the world to make sure that the medicine you
intend gets delivered, and then also reminding people like, hey,
just put a book out, like go read it. Yeah
you know, yeah, yeah, that the machine of like this
this is for you, please find it, especially with the
(10:23):
messaging we get around social media, and you know, constantly
having to produce is so detrimental to our mental wellness
and our creative health. Like it it just is. And
so when people are like, oh, you haven't posted, like
I just wrote a whole book. I wrote you a
whole book. Book. It's for you, go find it. And
(10:47):
then and then people and then some people you know,
of course they're new to the platform where they're new
to my working, like, oh, I had no idea. I
just bought all the books. I just bought all five
and the journals. And so it's allowing myself some breathing
room and also giving the immunity breathing room from constantly
consuming and a lot of times mindlessly, even if it's
mindfulness content. Many of us are so caught in like
(11:12):
a vortex of constant consuming and digesting of other people's thoughts, behaviors,
writing art, we don't even know what's ours anymore, and
so stepping back and giving people breathing room from what
we are creating, I just think it's wonderful. So that's
where I am. I think that's an amazing way of
(11:32):
phrasing that that as a creator, taking a step back
to care for and nourish yourself and rest is actually
a gift to your audience, as a gift to the world,
because it's saying, like, take a beat with the stuff,
even if what you're consuming on a minute by minute
basis is quote unquote healing work. Are you doing that
(11:55):
as a way to not digest it, to not hear
your own voice? We what we started started talking about
at the at the top of the conversation, right like,
once you start telling yourself the truth, then you have
to listen to yourself or decide not to. Yeah, I
love that idea as somebody who is creatively depleted a
(12:19):
lot of the time, like taking that taking that step
backwards is backwards backwards is the wrong word there, But
taking that step back to turn in seeing that as
a gift to the audience I think is a really
cool way for creators raising hand here um creators to
allow that rest to happen. Is really cool. Now we've
(12:39):
been talking about healing this whole time, and so much
of your work is around healing, and I wonder for
you if you're if you're ready to move on into
this this topic, like let's separate it into two if
you want to, and if you don't, that's fine too,
But like, where does your healing and your writing intersect
with grief? What's the relationship there for you? Everywhere everywhere?
(13:02):
And another thing I want to add to that is
my healing also intersects with joy because I think so
many of us are conditioned to and used to healing
the hurts, tackling the trauma, peeling back the layers of
the pain, but we're not necessarily encouraged to actually be
(13:27):
with our joy, be with the joy that comes up
in the midst of our brokenness, in the midst of
our grief. So a lot of my healing practice these
days is actually been joy work and knowing how to stop, celebrate,
relish in joy, and also be mindful of just acknowledging
(13:49):
it when it shows up. Just like the grief, we
have to acknowledge the things that are in front of
us in order for us to move through them. I
don't really believe in like moving on from things, because
some things will always feel tender, always heard, or never change.
And moving through life with those things in a way
(14:10):
that allows us to find self soothing and joy and
love in the midst of the things that may be tender,
I think is deeply important. So I feel like my
writing work is heavily centered on yes to healing, yes
to honoring grief, but also yes to leading into the
celebration of joy, because it really healing really is, at
(14:31):
the end of the day, a radical act of self
choosing and self advocacy, which we can't talk about those
things without also talking about joy and having that be
a part of our healing toolbox. I think that's so important,
such a such an important way of phrasing it too.
It's like the it's like time share in the psyche
(14:52):
right that. I feel like the way that joy or
maybe joy light gets promoted pop psychology in media is like,
you can't grasp joy if you're holding on to grief.
And what I hear you saying is hold on here.
There's a whole stew of emotion and experience and it's
(15:14):
not binary, it's not one or the other it's everything, yes,
And I think a lot of people struggle with their
healing practice because they think they have to be down
and out unfixing, and sometimes that's where we will be.
But also there are certain things, like I know for
me that I am continuing to heal through and I'm
(15:37):
still making space for joy and honesty around my grief.
I was speaking a few weeks ago to a group
of folks and I said, sometimes we don't need to
be fixed, we just simply need to be witnessed. And
I think that that's a big part of our healing,
is to just bear witness to what is in front
(15:58):
of us without trying to mend it. We don't even
know what we're mending sometimes. I mean, a lot of
us have so much trauma and ship that we're dealing
with and wrestling with, it's like where do I even start.
Sometimes the starting is just the witnessing, like Okay, this
is where this hurts, this is in my body where
I'm carrying this, or I remember when that happened and
(16:21):
that's how I felt ten years ago. Like literally just witnessing,
not necessarily going back to try to dismantle and prepare,
but just to look at it and see where spirit leads. Yeah,
the power in acknowledging and telling yourself the truth. Again,
it goes back to what we were talking about with
the power of storytelling and writing your own story to
(16:43):
yourself and listening to it. It's that act of listening, right,
that you have to see what has been true for you.
I also really, I mean, we know, I really love
the idea of not fixing things, but that there is
such power in saying out and I'll and saying yeah,
but right in the moment we're talking about saying out, like,
there's so much power in that, and that that is
(17:05):
in a lot of ways the full stop exercise. You
don't have to go back there and like, Okay, I
you know, I'm starting to work on childhood grief and
loss and trauma and what I didn't get in the world,
and I have to just dive in there and get
messy with it and wrestle with it and who And
also maybe there is great healing. What I hear you
(17:26):
saying is there's great healing in telling yourself the story
of what was and the effect that it's had on
you and just noticing like this is actually mindfulness, right,
just noticing holding, sitting next to it, like coming up
close to it, because so many of us are deeply
(17:46):
distant from ourselves and from our truth, and so back
to the whole truth telling is like, we need to
be honest with what we're feeling, how we're feeling, and
that's the first step. Not and but be honest. The
other things will come to complete full circle with honesty.
(18:09):
It may be challenging and maybe like I don't understand
what she's trying to stay. They're like, I've been honest,
but like, I know when I thought I've been honest,
and I'm you know, teetering on the line of withholding
as well. So I remember speaking with my therapist and
she was saying, is that the truth? And I said yeah,
she goes, is that the whole truth though, and she goes,
(18:31):
you don't have to say it to me, but make
sure you're saying the whole truth to yourself. And I
just remember being like, oh, damn, I guess she's probably right.
Therapists therapists who say things like that that it reminds
me of a friend of mine talks about writing about
the things you can't write about, and that the story
(18:53):
that you just told reminds me of that, like, if
it doesn't feel safe enough, or you don't you don't
have the space to be able to tell yourself the
full truth and tell that story right telling the story
of what it's like to not be able to tell
the truth right now, That in itself is magic. That
is a truth right now. Yeah, and that counts for
(19:17):
a lot. Oh my gosh, it counts for so much
because you're still you're still doing our truth telling mechanism
of action for the good of your healing, right You're
telling yourself the truth is I don't feel resourced enough
or supported enough to be able to even tell my
self the truth about what's happening right now. Okay, then
we can take the step backwards or backwards I keep
(19:38):
saying backwards, and it's not what it's such a it's
such an implied regression and that's not where I'm going.
But taking a step outside of that and saying, what
do I need for myself knowing that it's not safe
to tell the whole truth right now? What's the truth
in caring for myself inside not being able to tell
the whole truth? Love that framing It's still like it's
(19:59):
such it's such a kindness. And something interesting happened today.
So I mentioned I have three children. My oldest is fifteen,
my youngest is three, my middle will be five next week.
So we have an array of ages in the house,
all girls, and they are so wonderful. And my oldest
(20:21):
is a freshman in high school. And she texts me
today she said, Mom, can I call you? And I said, yeah,
what's going on? Are you okay? No, I'm not okay.
So she calls and she's crying and she's having a moment.
We're talking through the moment, and I just said, remember
what the truth is and what your truth is. You
(20:41):
have the answers to this already, and she did and
she goes, yeah, I know, I know what I need
to do. And it was around school work and stuff.
And she's kind of a perfectionist that used to being
straight a student, and like she's just adjusting to being
a high schooler in in ap honors classes and it's hard,
and I just said, listen. She was like, I just
(21:01):
think you're going to be disappointed. And I'm not disappointed.
Papa won't be disappointed. You might be disappointed. So that's
maybe where this truth is coming from for you? And
she goes, yeah it is. I said, okay, well, I
am here to support you whatever you need for me,
to help you stay organized, to help this end of
the marketing period feel good for you. But only you
(21:23):
can handle this. Mama is not in high school anymore,
thank god. Okay, you know, my poor, my poor sweet
soul of a girl is like just trying to balance
and figure it out part of being a human, right
and she and she is. She also said I know
what I need to do by the end of our conversation,
(21:43):
and so that feels good because even when things may
not be going how we want them to go, we
can still make it back to the truth. And I
think that that's something really beautiful. And as a mother,
teaching my children self love through gentleness us and through
truth telling and through okay, let's talk about the hard
(22:06):
thing here and see what's going on like that is
such a gift for our lineage. I talk about this
and how we heal when we heal ourselves, we heal
each other, we heal our lineage. And so I'm sharing
that little bitty story because one being a caretaker is
not easy, but it's beautiful work if we're leaning in
(22:26):
with intention. And two, we have to show our children,
whether we're raising them or they just in our lives
in some capacity, god kids, niece's, nephews, whatever, like we
are giving their watching us, they're bearing witness to us,
right and so we're giving them the tools with our responses,
with our you know, with what we don't say. And
(22:49):
it's like, how do we make sure that we're nurturing
and healing and growing our lineage in a way that
is healthy and also rooted in truth. And it's not
that you're going to present this like I have my
ship together persona to the people who are watching you
for a living. I hear this a lot with grieving families.
(23:12):
They're like, you know, my kids lost their other parents,
and I don't want to be sad around them, and
you know, I have to have myself together and emotionally
calmed like all of this stuff. And of course you
want to do things in an age appropriate way. You
don't want to be sobbing on your four year old shoulder,
leaning on them like you had a therapist. But at
the same time, it's like being able to say this
(23:34):
is really difficult right now, and here's how I'm handling it.
How are you handling it? And I love that you
bring in like reminding someone of the truth that they
already know. That's very different than dismissing them and saying
you figure it out? Right, Like, what's the difference for
you between you figure it out and calling somebody into
their own truth? Okay, before we get back to the show,
(24:05):
I want to tell you about a new way to
connect with me. Each and every month, I host a
live video call in show. If you've ever wish you
could talk to me directly, this is by far the
easiest way to do it. All of the information is
at patreon dot com, backslash Megan Divine, and you can
also find that link in the show notes. I hope
to see you there everybody. All right, let's get back
(24:27):
to my conversation with best selling author Alex l what's
the difference for you between you figure it out and
calling somebody into their own truth. That's a really good
question because I was raised with you figure it out?
M hm. Same, you know, and kids are to be
seen and not heard, and you do what I say
(24:47):
in this house like I very much that was raised
like that and I knew that I did not want
to bring that into my home with my kids. Here's
the thing. We don't have to tell folks our children
or not to figure it out, because people freaking know
that they need to figure it out, right, So we
(25:08):
don't have to remind people to figure it out because
everyone is freaking trying their best. So that's unhelpful. That's
unhelpful that people are figuring it out. So that's one
thing I would say, let's stop using that language because
it just compounds the stress and the internal emotional chaos.
(25:31):
And then lovingly calling somebody in is more for me.
When I hear that, I hear asking questions, how are
you feeling right now? Why do you think this is happening?
You know, when we were talking about school today, okay,
so why do you think this is happening? And then
she told me do you think that's true? She goes,
I know that that's true, right, So talking this is
(25:54):
how I work with my clients and how I now started.
I mean, I don't coach my teen year olds, but
her mama, my mama, her. This is how my mom
with her. Like I just I just asked questions and
also I offer reframes like as an outsider looking in,
sometimes we may be able to offer a different perspective,
(26:17):
And so I'll ask, like, can I share what I'm seeing?
Sometimes she'll say yes. Sometimes she'll say now the asking
is so important, though, getting that permission before we jump
in with our take on things, which is which is
so hard, so hard, so hard. There's a lot of
lip biting and sitting on hands. Man. Yeah, And I
(26:38):
mean I think about that with grief too. I have
a friend who lost her sister and her dad within
the same year, and we were on FaceTime and we
were talking and she uh got emotional and started crying
and just was talking her way through and was crying
(26:59):
and doing it. And I know that our first human
instinct is to be like, oh, don't cry, Oh it's okay,
But I act actual wouldn't even crying. I mean, I
was just talking and she's having a moment, and I'm
gonna hold this. I have the capacity. I'm gonna hold
this moment steady for her. And at the end of
what she was saying, she goes, thanks for not fixing
(27:23):
my tears or trying to fix what's me being sad.
Thank you, And I said I love you, You're welcome,
because I remember growing up my mom always saying tears
don't solve problems, tears don't fix anything. So I never
was allowed to grieve. I don't think I started grieving
(27:45):
until I turned to thirty, and that was almost four.
I'll be thirty four this year. And so it's interesting
what happens when we become adults and we have to
unlearn the things that we've picked up in childhood, and
then we have to model the way that we want
to be in the world without having an example. When
no one taught me how to be a mother, no
(28:06):
one taught me how to be norm and nurturing. I
had to figure that out on my own. No one
taught me how to hold space and not try to
fix someone's tears. I had to figure it out on
my own. And I think it's for me a part
of my healing and grief work is what did I
need that I didn't get And how do I hold
(28:26):
myself and my community in a way that I wish
that I was held. So I think that's really what
healing and calling in and grief and the intersection of
joy and everything. It's really like an emotional onion. Like
that's really kind of how I look at it. It's
so multifascinated as all these different stepping stones that bring
us home to ourselves. I love that image of holding
(28:47):
the moment steady for someone not jumping in to fix
something is so unusual because it is hard. It's the
way that we're trained right through every possible influx, Like
trained if somebody is having a moment, you need to
get them out of that moment. So not acting on
(29:07):
that impulse, right and and you know your friends saying
thank you for not fixing it, Like, it's such a
rarity to be able to in your emotions, in your truth,
in your grief, in whatever is going on, for you
to feel like you have the space to feel it
without being rushed out of it. That is the thing.
I wrote something about rushing this week, and I want
(29:29):
to read it to you because I was often rushed
as a child, and something that I'm learning what learning
not to do is rush in my life. So my
word of the year is a nourishment. And I am
deeply leaning into finding alignment and nourishment and slowing down.
(29:50):
And so can I reach you what I wrote about
please rushing. It says, give yourself permission to slow down.
Slow down in your relations and ships, slow down in rushing,
to say yes, slow down instead of immediately saying no.
Allow yourself to practice the sacred act of ease and
(30:10):
intentional processing. You don't have to know what's next today,
you don't have to know how you feel at this
very moment. You're allowed to pace yourself to think about things,
and you are allowed to process, release the idea that
you've got to know and solve and address things right now.
You don't slow down. I just think that that's so
(30:33):
important because we live in a world that teaches the
complete opposite, and so they just wonder what would happen
if more of us slowed steadied. Yeah, thank you for that.
I feel like there's that implied finish line in healing
work of any kind that means we have to keep
moving and we have to keep moving forward right that.
(30:56):
If you aren't actively working your healing, you're doing it wrong,
which is just such trash, total trash. It's not true
to lie, it's not true. That's not true. There's something
that you've said before that's sort of related to this.
Give yourself permission to heal from the same thing more
than once. I feel like those those are related sentiments.
(31:19):
What you just shared about slowing down and taking space
and making a nourishing pacing for yourself in your life,
and this idea that you can heal from the same
thing more than once. I mean, I think we're all
doing it every day. I think often about my husband
who lost his mom six years ago, and he said,
(31:43):
that is never not going to hurt, that is always
going to tear me up, and that is okay. So
giving ourselves permission to self soothed through those triggered moments,
through those super tender moments, through those deeply painful wounds,
I think it's how we take our power back. I
(32:06):
know for me, I struggle with a lot of childhood
trauma and neglect and abandonment and really harsh treatment from
my caretakers, and that will hurt me forever, especially as
I look at my children. I'm like, how could anyone
not want to just make things better and easeful and
(32:29):
loving for their child? And so that's inner child work
that I will be tending to and patching up and
giving kisses until I can't. I share things like that
because So many folks think healing is this arrival, but
really it's a forever love that teaches us and calls
(32:50):
us in to learn how to hold steady for ourselves.
I really that's what healing is. It's a practice, it's
a lifestyle practice, and it's so much more than the hurt.
It's also the joy Like. Healing has allowed me to
create a beautiful, loving home for my children, has allowed
me to be in deep partnership and friendship with my husband,
(33:15):
has allowed me to have really impactful, nourishing sisterhood friendships,
all because of the healing work I chose to do.
And that's joyous. So when I say healing is also
this radical act of joy like, that's what I mean.
It opens up so many doors for emotional expansion in
(33:36):
really beautiful ways. Yeah, it doesn't mean the thing that
the things that hurt don't hurt anymore. Yeah, because I
think if we don't allow ourselves to come into relationship
with the things that hurt, all of that energy goes
to suppressing it. We can't liberate the life force of
(33:56):
the things that hurt if we don't let them hurt.
That's the thing that's it. Yeah. Again, truth telling where
does it hurt. That's major. It's major, it is major.
And holding space for yourself. I'm going to come back
to that so many times that like steadying the moment
(34:18):
for yourself and for others, it's really for me, like
this is what builds a nourished, nourishing, joyful, creative life.
It is not a life that doesn't hurt. It's actually
a life that contains a lot of hurt. Because that
is true. Yeah, it's a bit of a leap, but
we're talking about pain that we carry and coming into
(34:41):
relationship with it. And I would love to widen our
lens out a little bit and talk about the pain
of the world, if that's okay with you. So I
remember seeing a post that you put up soon after
yet another mass shooting that happened in the last year,
and you wrote, I feel like I've been crying for
a lifetime. So the first question that I had for
(35:02):
this is like, how do we balance healing work and
a belief enjoy in the world such as it is.
I struggle with that, especially as a parent who sends
their children out into the world to go to school.
I think what has helped me soften some of the
(35:27):
worldly anxiety that I have is savoring the now in
the moment and being present with the right now. I mean,
I walked through the world with O c D depression
and anxiety as an adult. I take fifty of the
loft every day, and so I know that if I
(35:50):
don't hone in on some of the anxieties that I
can't carry, it will literally make me feel outside of myself.
And so when the last mass shooting happened with those
little kids at that elementary school, I was so sad,
(36:13):
like it hurt me on a different level, and I
wasn't one of the parents who lost their children. I
felt like all those children were my children, and all
of that sadness was my sadness, and all that pain
was my pain. And I really had to turn to
Pema Children's work and Tick Nakhan's work and try to
make sense of this is crazy that there's so much
(36:38):
pain in the world. Like I know those families wanted
the world to stop just for a second. But even
in that moment, people didn't know about the tragedy. People,
you know, some people were everybody, not some people. Everybody,
Like time goes on, and that's what's so wild to me.
(36:59):
I just lost my grandfather a month ago, and I
remember getting the news at the airport before I got
on my flight home to d C and wishing that
there was like a pause button. But the world I
was it was the most strange thing. I'm looking around
and everyone there's people laughing, there's people just life is happening,
(37:19):
and I am dealing with this loss. It is wild,
and so I think I don't want to say hope,
but I think knowing that all I can control is
myself is not always the most comforting thing, because I
wish I could control all these outside forces and keep
my baby safe and keep these these terrible things from
(37:41):
happening and stop people from dying, and like, of course,
but we can't. So it's like, how do we hold
the truth of that and still allow ourselves to live
and to find joy. Me and my husband talk about
this a lot, especially when it comes to underserved communities
and poverty and things like that, right, and so it
(38:02):
can be just deeply challenging to be like, WHOA, only
certain people had certain access to this, but so many
people don't have access. So it's been like how do
we It's like, I'm the type person. It's like, I
just want to fix the world, So let's figure out
how we can give everybody access, how we can take
everybody's pain. But that's just I wish that's how it works,
(38:22):
it's not how it works, and so I don't know.
I've just been holding a lot of space for the
duality of joy and grief because, as the Buddhists have said,
to live is to suffer. But how do we hold
ourselves through the suffering that we are inevitably going to
go through? And I don't have an answer, which is
probably why I'm rambling, But that's a really great question
(38:43):
to talk through because it's like I don't know, and
what do I know to be true? And how do
I process that? That's the thing there, Right, It's like
I always get so irritated with like Buddhism light right,
with like pain of like life is suffering, So stop
being so attached and it won't bug you. Right, This
really reductive, transactional interpretation, very loose interpretation of some really
(39:08):
powerful teaching. And I love the rambling way you just
describe that because it's like, there is so much pain
in the world, and there is probably not a lot
I can do about it. So what is what can
in my power? What can I do for myself, for
the close in community around me? How do I want
(39:29):
to be engaging in the world, are relating to the
world knowing that there is a metric ton of pain
that I can do nothing about. It's it really is
calling that that power of your own truth back to
yourself and not lying to yourself that you're okay with
the mess of the world or that you are powerless,
because that's also not true. Yeah, I feel that deeply,
(39:52):
and I think too, there's also this sense of I
don't know if it's guilt, uh maybe guilt where it's like, wow,
some people are gonna have it a lot worse than
I ever have, and that is terrible, and like, what
do we do, especially as someone who's a feeler. I'm
(40:15):
a feeler and I don't even watch I cannot watch
the news. I don't even listen to the news anymore.
I just can't. I can't do it. It was literally
draining my energy. I was just sad, and so as
I'm thinking about what we were just talking about, and
you mentioned like what can I do in my immediate space?
(40:36):
And I think my duty is to love on people,
is to love these kids and raise them to be kind, compassionate,
caring humans, and is to show up in my work
and to keep writing these books and to keep giving
away as many free books as I can when I can,
and to love on people. To smile at people when
(40:57):
I'm on my walks, to say hello to the cash year,
to ask how people are doing, to make eye contact,
like that's what I can do. And I know that
those things sound so small, and sometimes I'm like, that's
not enough. But then I go back to the target
that I always go to, and I go to the
same cashier and I asked her how she's doing, and
we sit and were talking, holding up the line for
(41:18):
ten minutes that she's telling me how she's doing, and
I'm listening and I'm holding steady and I'm listening, and
she's like, all right, baby, i'll see you next time.
Come back to my line. Like that is leaving the
world better. Maybe that made her whole day, you know,
And so like it's those little things that we can
do two do our part, be intentional with how we're
(41:42):
moving through the world. That's what That's really what I've
been leaning on doing How do how can I serve
by being intentional? Yeah, and holding steady at your point
in the world, in this day, in this moment, in
this relationship, with this situation in front of me. It's
not about pain or not pain. It's not about fixing
(42:03):
or not fixing. It's about how do I show up
and see the truth in this and hold study. I
love this. That is something that I feel like that
I can hold onto, and I hope that other people
can hold onto as well. I end every conversation during
the season with the same question. And you and I
have sort of traveled at the outskirts of hope off
(42:25):
and on during our whole time together. But I'm going
to ask you this question anyway. So, knowing what you
know and living what you've lived, what does hope look
like for you? It's a really beautiful question. What's coming
to mind is hope looks like the possibility of coming
(42:47):
home to myself, regardless of the season. I'm in the healing,
I'm in the joy, I'm in the grief I'm in
I hope that I can always find my way home
to myself into my center. So that's what hope looks
like for me. I love it, and this is a
really good place for us to close out our time
(43:08):
together because I'm going to go sit with your words
with myself for a while and see what comes up
into that moment. So we're gonna obviously link to your
book and your website and your social media in the
show notes for today's show. Is there anything else you
want people to know where to find you, what to
look for, what's coming up next for you? You can
find me at wherever they plug the show notes. I'm there.
(43:31):
I have a small emotional wellness group coaching session that's
coming up. It's a six week session that starts in
February and I'm really excited about that and I'll be
doing three more this year, so once of quarters you
can look out for that on Alex l dot com.
And if you want a newsletter from me, I write
a newsletter on sub stack called Gratitude Journal and it's
(43:55):
a fun little place to be and reflections there. So
if you can find me there too, awesome. We will
link to all of that stuff in the show notes. Everybody, Alex,
thank you so much for being here. Stay tuned. Everybody
will be back with your questions to carry with you
after this break each week, I leave you with some
(44:20):
questions to carry with you until we meet again. Now,
you know, it really struck me in this conversation was
when alex said, give yourself permission to heal from the
same thing more than once. So often I think we're
really hard on ourselves, like when old wounds or old
patterns are old habits come up and we're like, I
thought I did that work already. But it really is
(44:41):
true that nothing about being human is a linear do
it once and you're all done process. Really, nothing about
human is linear like that. Everything is a continuum. So
giving yourself permission to heal from the same thing more
than once, I really like that. How about you? What
(45:02):
stood out to you in this conversation with Alexel. Everybody's
going to take something different from today's show, but I
do hope you find something to hold onto. Hope really
is a crowdsourced thing, and I definitely want to hear
from you on all this. Check out Refuge in Grief
on Instagram or here after Pod on TikTok to see
video clips from the show and leave your thoughts in
(45:23):
the comments on those posts. Be sure to tag us
on your own social media accounts and use the hashtag
here after pod on all the platforms so we can
find you. We'd love to see where the show takes you. Everybody,
and remember to subscribe and leave a review. That stuff
helps more than you could ever know. If you want
(45:44):
to tell us how today's show felt for you, or
you have a request or a question for an upcoming episode,
send us an email. You can do that right from
the website. Megan Divine dot c O. We want to
hear from you. I want to hear from you. This show,
this world needs your voice. Together, we can make things
(46:04):
better even when they can't be made right. Want more Hereafter.
Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues.
As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday
grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk
about all of that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic
dismissive statements is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings,
(46:28):
professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that
You're Not Okay. Plus The Guided Journal for Grief at
Megan Divine dot c O. Hereafter with Megan Divine is
written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is
Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fossio. Logistical and social
media support from Micah, edited by Houston Tilly, Music provided
(46:52):
by Wave Crush and background noise provided by me being
antsy in the chair and the chair being squeaky. Oh.
I remember speaking with my therapist and she was saying,
is that the truth? And I said yeah, She goes,
is that the whole truth though, and she goes, you
don't have to say it to me, but make sure
you're saying the whole truth to yourself. This is here after,
and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author of the best
selling book It's Okay that You're Not Okay. This week
(00:22):
on the show, best selling author Alex L joins us
to talk about her new book and what healing really means.
That big broad discussion coming up right after this first break.
Before we get started, one quick note. While we cover
(00:44):
a lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode,
this show is not a substitute for skilled support for
the licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
to your work. Hey friends, So if you know me
at all, you know I'm a huge fan of writing
as a process for self discovery, for processing and making
(01:08):
general sense of the world. Writers who write for their
own self care tend to be really cool people. Best
Selling author Alex L has a long history of writing
and healing, stretching way back to her childhood. She teaches
workshops and writing to heal. She hosted the podcast Hey
Girl and still co host the podcast Daily Walk. Her
(01:29):
books include After the Rain, Gentle, Reminders for Healing, Courage
and Self Love, Notes from a Wanderer, and her new
book How We Heal. I told you she's been writing
for healing for a really long time. In today's show,
we cover a big range of territory, from motherhood to
community healing to the incredible power of telling yourself the
(01:50):
truth about your own life. I hope you enjoy it. Alex,
Welcome to the show. I am so glad to speak
with you today. There's so much we can talk about,
but I think one of the places that I would
love to start is with writing itself. One of the
favorite things that I learned about you as I was
(02:11):
preparing for our time together, it was you said that
you wrote your first book all of those years ago
because a friend of yours said you should stop hoarding
your stories. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, So,
first of all, thanks for having me. I can't wait
to dive into this chat with you. So. I've always
been a writer always. Um. I'm the only child, so
(02:32):
I used storytelling and stuff as a kid. Often, I
don't know if you remember, like the little karaoke machines
that had the microphone externally and then you could like
put a tape in and record yourself. So I used to.
I used to do that with my story. So I
would have like these novella style sound stories on tape,
(02:53):
because that's just what I did. And so I like,
if those still exists somewhere, they could be really inter stay.
Oh my god, they would be gold, totally gold. Okay.
So I've always been a writer. I've always used writing
as the self soothing tool, as storytelling tool, as a
boredom tool. And it wasn't until I started doing my
(03:16):
deep healing work or trying to around in that span
where I learned the benefits of writing to heal, writing
to recap or to purge, but really to figure out
and and become more self aware and more self accountable
and more self trusting. And so when I had stepped
(03:37):
into that realm of my writing, I started writing notes
to self and poetry. And a friend of mine said,
you know, stop hoarding your stories and your happiness. You
never know who might need your voice. She was older
than me, and I believe that was her her healing
wisdom shining through because I hadn't quite gotten there yet,
and I'm like, who would want to read a book
(03:59):
from me? I was twenty three when I wrote my
first book. I'm thirty three now. That was ten years ago,
and she said, you never know. And I did it.
And along with you know, my then boyfriend now husband,
his support, and a couple other friends who were in
my corner, I did it. I self published my first
book and it was really just for me. But I
(04:21):
think universe, God's Spirit had other I mean clearly had
other plans, because I am five books in three journals
in and teaching this work for a living, and I
just think it's interesting how when we let our stories
and our healing take root in our lives in new ways,
it can have this deeply overwhelming impact on our community.
(04:43):
And that's what happened, yeah, which is amazing. Like I
love that orientation or that foundation of I write this
way for myself first, right, and then letting that notes
to self, which is that that starting place for you,
letting those that note to self be a gift to
the world to see where other people like where that
(05:04):
overlapping then diagram of self is in the readership. I
just think there's something deeply beautiful about like feeling less
alone in our stories too, which is valuable. It's totally valuable.
Sticking with sort of craft of writing for a second,
I mean, I've been a writer much like you, like
my entire life writing to myself, and I wish I
(05:25):
could find those journals from when I was eleven, mixture
of awe and horror, probably for myself, but when I
teach writing as well, A lot of what I hear
back is the writing saved me sentiment. What does that
mean for you? Does that resonate for you? Like writing
saved me? What does that? What does that even mean?
Writing not only saved me, but it changed me. It
(05:47):
changed my relationship with myself. It allowed me to actually
start listening to myself. So something that I do a lot,
especially with my students and clients who may be kind
of intimidated by writing. This is okay, you don't want
to go to the page yet, that's fine, but voice
note journal and then go back and listen to yourself,
(06:07):
listen to your own words. And I think that that's
really how I found the harmony with my writing practice
and with my healing practice is not only writing, but
listening to my writing or listening to my own thoughts
before taking it to my writing. So yeah, it's saved me,
(06:28):
it changed me, and I mean it has shown me
a lot about the possibility. I mean, my work is
deeply rooted in healing and self awareness and less about
self improvement and self help and more about self nurturing,
like how do we want to show up in our
lives for ourselves so that we can then trickle down
(06:50):
and support our communities, And so that in itself is
like game changing, you know. And so that's what writing
has offered me. It's been multifaceted. I love that you
have to listen to yourself thing, and I think that's
why a lot of people don't write, because it's really
hard to lie to yourself on the page. I mean
(07:10):
you can try, but then you'll be like, oh that,
like that's literally a lie. So okay, yeah, you can
see it when you do it, like it's oh yeah, man. Yeah.
I remember reading that you said that you have your
your students do notes to self as an exercise and
that talking to yourself in that way is often the
(07:30):
hardest thing for people. Because I think like you you
can't lie to yourself and you have to listen, and
then you have that knowledge, and what are you going
to do with it? Once you hear yourself tell yourself
the truth, then it's a conscious effort to ignore that
truth or to find ways to live into it. I
don't really have anywhere to go with that, because like
(07:52):
I feel that in myself too, as a writer who
writes for myself as well as for public consumption. Like
there's that self and other thing about writing. There was
a there was a post you you put up on
Instagram a few months ago now, I think soon after
your your last book hit the New York Times bestseller
list of like I am exhausted and I don't want
(08:15):
to play this. I don't want to play this game anymore.
By everybody, it's been fun right like literally by Yeah.
So there's like there's always I feel like for writers,
there's there's always speaking for myself here, there's always that
those two faces of the act of writing. There's the
(08:36):
way that we right to serve ourselves on our own healing,
and there's the healing work that we put out into
the world. And m hm, oh, you know, it's it's
emotionally exhausting before you know we started. I told you
you asked me how today was, because he's been great.
I just woke up from a nap, and you know,
just I have literally given myself permission to slow down,
(09:00):
and just coming off of a book tour and press
and my creating a book is I have three human
children and lots of book children. So I often joke
like making a book is like having a child. In
a way, it's a rebirth. Every time I write a
new book, I feel rebored, just like every time I
(09:21):
have a new baby. I feel like a whole shedding
is happening right and I'm in my postpartum book period.
I know that sounds so extra and over the top,
but I really feel like it's time to do nothing
for three months. It's time to settle, rest, recalibrate, and
(09:41):
then find your words. And I don't feel bad about
it at all. You can't keep giving from empty. I
love that analogy of postpartum the postpartum period after a
book launch. It's like there is so much work that
happens behind the scenes before you even start type yes,
(10:01):
and then so much work after the baby comes out
into the world to make sure that the medicine you
intend gets delivered, and then also reminding people like, hey,
just put a book out, like go read it. Yeah
you know, yeah, yeah, that the machine of like this
this is for you, please find it, especially with the
(10:23):
messaging we get around social media, and you know, constantly
having to produce is so detrimental to our mental wellness
and our creative health. Like it it just is. And
so when people are like, oh, you haven't posted, like
I just wrote a whole book. I wrote you a
whole book. Book. It's for you, go find it. And
(10:47):
then and then people and then some people you know,
of course they're new to the platform where they're new
to my working, like, oh, I had no idea. I
just bought all the books. I just bought all five
and the journals. And so it's allowing myself some breathing
room and also giving the immunity breathing room from constantly
consuming and a lot of times mindlessly, even if it's
mindfulness content. Many of us are so caught in like
(11:12):
a vortex of constant consuming and digesting of other people's thoughts, behaviors,
writing art, we don't even know what's ours anymore, and
so stepping back and giving people breathing room from what
we are creating, I just think it's wonderful. So that's
where I am. I think that's an amazing way of
(11:32):
phrasing that that as a creator, taking a step back
to care for and nourish yourself and rest is actually
a gift to your audience, as a gift to the world,
because it's saying, like, take a beat with the stuff,
even if what you're consuming on a minute by minute
basis is quote unquote healing work. Are you doing that
(11:55):
as a way to not digest it, to not hear
your own voice? We what we started started talking about
at the at the top of the conversation, right like,
once you start telling yourself the truth, then you have
to listen to yourself or decide not to. Yeah, I
love that idea as somebody who is creatively depleted a
(12:19):
lot of the time, like taking that taking that step
backwards is backwards backwards is the wrong word there, But
taking that step back to turn in seeing that as
a gift to the audience I think is a really
cool way for creators raising hand here um creators to
allow that rest to happen. Is really cool. Now we've
(12:39):
been talking about healing this whole time, and so much
of your work is around healing, and I wonder for
you if you're if you're ready to move on into
this this topic, like let's separate it into two if
you want to, and if you don't, that's fine too,
But like, where does your healing and your writing intersect
with grief? What's the relationship there for you? Everywhere everywhere?
(13:02):
And another thing I want to add to that is
my healing also intersects with joy because I think so
many of us are conditioned to and used to healing
the hurts, tackling the trauma, peeling back the layers of
the pain, but we're not necessarily encouraged to actually be
(13:27):
with our joy, be with the joy that comes up
in the midst of our brokenness, in the midst of
our grief. So a lot of my healing practice these
days is actually been joy work and knowing how to stop, celebrate,
relish in joy, and also be mindful of just acknowledging
(13:49):
it when it shows up. Just like the grief, we
have to acknowledge the things that are in front of
us in order for us to move through them. I
don't really believe in like moving on from things, because
some things will always feel tender, always heard, or never change.
And moving through life with those things in a way
(14:10):
that allows us to find self soothing and joy and
love in the midst of the things that may be tender,
I think is deeply important. So I feel like my
writing work is heavily centered on yes to healing, yes
to honoring grief, but also yes to leading into the
celebration of joy, because it really healing really is, at
(14:31):
the end of the day, a radical act of self
choosing and self advocacy, which we can't talk about those
things without also talking about joy and having that be
a part of our healing toolbox. I think that's so important,
such a such an important way of phrasing it too.
It's like the it's like time share in the psyche
(14:52):
right that. I feel like the way that joy or
maybe joy light gets promoted pop psychology in media is like,
you can't grasp joy if you're holding on to grief.
And what I hear you saying is hold on here.
There's a whole stew of emotion and experience and it's
(15:14):
not binary, it's not one or the other it's everything, yes,
And I think a lot of people struggle with their
healing practice because they think they have to be down
and out unfixing, and sometimes that's where we will be.
But also there are certain things, like I know for
me that I am continuing to heal through and I'm
(15:37):
still making space for joy and honesty around my grief.
I was speaking a few weeks ago to a group
of folks and I said, sometimes we don't need to
be fixed, we just simply need to be witnessed. And
I think that that's a big part of our healing,
is to just bear witness to what is in front
(15:58):
of us without trying to mend it. We don't even
know what we're mending sometimes. I mean, a lot of
us have so much trauma and ship that we're dealing
with and wrestling with, it's like where do I even start.
Sometimes the starting is just the witnessing, like Okay, this
is where this hurts, this is in my body where
I'm carrying this, or I remember when that happened and
(16:21):
that's how I felt ten years ago. Like literally just witnessing,
not necessarily going back to try to dismantle and prepare,
but just to look at it and see where spirit leads. Yeah,
the power in acknowledging and telling yourself the truth. Again,
it goes back to what we were talking about with
the power of storytelling and writing your own story to
(16:43):
yourself and listening to it. It's that act of listening, right,
that you have to see what has been true for you.
I also really, I mean, we know, I really love
the idea of not fixing things, but that there is
such power in saying out and I'll and saying yeah,
but right in the moment we're talking about saying out, like,
there's so much power in that, and that that is
(17:05):
in a lot of ways the full stop exercise. You
don't have to go back there and like, Okay, I
you know, I'm starting to work on childhood grief and
loss and trauma and what I didn't get in the world,
and I have to just dive in there and get
messy with it and wrestle with it and who And
also maybe there is great healing. What I hear you
(17:26):
saying is there's great healing in telling yourself the story
of what was and the effect that it's had on
you and just noticing like this is actually mindfulness, right,
just noticing holding, sitting next to it, like coming up
close to it, because so many of us are deeply
(17:46):
distant from ourselves and from our truth, and so back
to the whole truth telling is like, we need to
be honest with what we're feeling, how we're feeling, and
that's the first step. Not and but be honest. The
other things will come to complete full circle with honesty.
(18:09):
It may be challenging and maybe like I don't understand
what she's trying to stay. They're like, I've been honest,
but like, I know when I thought I've been honest,
and I'm you know, teetering on the line of withholding
as well. So I remember speaking with my therapist and
she was saying, is that the truth? And I said yeah,
she goes, is that the whole truth though, and she goes,
(18:31):
you don't have to say it to me, but make
sure you're saying the whole truth to yourself. And I
just remember being like, oh, damn, I guess she's probably right.
Therapists therapists who say things like that that it reminds
me of a friend of mine talks about writing about
the things you can't write about, and that the story
(18:53):
that you just told reminds me of that, like, if
it doesn't feel safe enough, or you don't you don't
have the space to be able to tell yourself the
full truth and tell that story right telling the story
of what it's like to not be able to tell
the truth right now, That in itself is magic. That
is a truth right now. Yeah, and that counts for
(19:17):
a lot. Oh my gosh, it counts for so much
because you're still you're still doing our truth telling mechanism
of action for the good of your healing, right You're
telling yourself the truth is I don't feel resourced enough
or supported enough to be able to even tell my
self the truth about what's happening right now. Okay, then
we can take the step backwards or backwards I keep
(19:38):
saying backwards, and it's not what it's such a it's
such an implied regression and that's not where I'm going.
But taking a step outside of that and saying, what
do I need for myself knowing that it's not safe
to tell the whole truth right now? What's the truth
in caring for myself inside not being able to tell
the whole truth? Love that framing It's still like it's
(19:59):
such it's such a kindness. And something interesting happened today.
So I mentioned I have three children. My oldest is fifteen,
my youngest is three, my middle will be five next week.
So we have an array of ages in the house,
all girls, and they are so wonderful. And my oldest
(20:21):
is a freshman in high school. And she texts me
today she said, Mom, can I call you? And I said, yeah,
what's going on? Are you okay? No, I'm not okay.
So she calls and she's crying and she's having a moment.
We're talking through the moment, and I just said, remember
what the truth is and what your truth is. You
(20:41):
have the answers to this already, and she did and
she goes, yeah, I know, I know what I need
to do. And it was around school work and stuff.
And she's kind of a perfectionist that used to being
straight a student, and like she's just adjusting to being
a high schooler in in ap honors classes and it's hard,
and I just said, listen. She was like, I just
(21:01):
think you're going to be disappointed. And I'm not disappointed.
Papa won't be disappointed. You might be disappointed. So that's
maybe where this truth is coming from for you? And
she goes, yeah it is. I said, okay, well, I
am here to support you whatever you need for me,
to help you stay organized, to help this end of
the marketing period feel good for you. But only you
(21:23):
can handle this. Mama is not in high school anymore,
thank god. Okay, you know, my poor, my poor sweet
soul of a girl is like just trying to balance
and figure it out part of being a human, right
and she and she is. She also said I know
what I need to do by the end of our conversation,
(21:43):
and so that feels good because even when things may
not be going how we want them to go, we
can still make it back to the truth. And I
think that that's something really beautiful. And as a mother,
teaching my children self love through gentleness us and through
truth telling and through okay, let's talk about the hard
(22:06):
thing here and see what's going on like that is
such a gift for our lineage. I talk about this
and how we heal when we heal ourselves, we heal
each other, we heal our lineage. And so I'm sharing
that little bitty story because one being a caretaker is
not easy, but it's beautiful work if we're leaning in
(22:26):
with intention. And two, we have to show our children,
whether we're raising them or they just in our lives
in some capacity, god kids, niece's, nephews, whatever, like we
are giving their watching us, they're bearing witness to us,
right and so we're giving them the tools with our responses,
with our you know, with what we don't say. And
(22:49):
it's like, how do we make sure that we're nurturing
and healing and growing our lineage in a way that
is healthy and also rooted in truth. And it's not
that you're going to present this like I have my
ship together persona to the people who are watching you
for a living. I hear this a lot with grieving families.
(23:12):
They're like, you know, my kids lost their other parents,
and I don't want to be sad around them, and
you know, I have to have myself together and emotionally
calmed like all of this stuff. And of course you
want to do things in an age appropriate way. You
don't want to be sobbing on your four year old shoulder,
leaning on them like you had a therapist. But at
the same time, it's like being able to say this
(23:34):
is really difficult right now, and here's how I'm handling it.
How are you handling it? And I love that you
bring in like reminding someone of the truth that they
already know. That's very different than dismissing them and saying
you figure it out? Right, Like, what's the difference for
you between you figure it out and calling somebody into
their own truth? Okay, before we get back to the show,
(24:05):
I want to tell you about a new way to
connect with me. Each and every month, I host a
live video call in show. If you've ever wish you
could talk to me directly, this is by far the
easiest way to do it. All of the information is
at patreon dot com, backslash Megan Divine, and you can
also find that link in the show notes. I hope
to see you there everybody. All right, let's get back
(24:27):
to my conversation with best selling author Alex l what's
the difference for you between you figure it out and
calling somebody into their own truth. That's a really good
question because I was raised with you figure it out?
M hm. Same, you know, and kids are to be
seen and not heard, and you do what I say
(24:47):
in this house like I very much that was raised
like that and I knew that I did not want
to bring that into my home with my kids. Here's
the thing. We don't have to tell folks our children
or not to figure it out, because people freaking know
that they need to figure it out, right, So we
(25:08):
don't have to remind people to figure it out because
everyone is freaking trying their best. So that's unhelpful. That's
unhelpful that people are figuring it out. So that's one
thing I would say, let's stop using that language because
it just compounds the stress and the internal emotional chaos.
(25:31):
And then lovingly calling somebody in is more for me.
When I hear that, I hear asking questions, how are
you feeling right now? Why do you think this is happening?
You know, when we were talking about school today, okay,
so why do you think this is happening? And then
she told me do you think that's true? She goes,
I know that that's true, right, So talking this is
(25:54):
how I work with my clients and how I now started.
I mean, I don't coach my teen year olds, but
her mama, my mama, her. This is how my mom
with her. Like I just I just asked questions and
also I offer reframes like as an outsider looking in,
sometimes we may be able to offer a different perspective,
(26:17):
And so I'll ask, like, can I share what I'm seeing?
Sometimes she'll say yes. Sometimes she'll say now the asking
is so important, though, getting that permission before we jump
in with our take on things, which is which is
so hard, so hard, so hard. There's a lot of
lip biting and sitting on hands. Man. Yeah, And I
(26:38):
mean I think about that with grief too. I have
a friend who lost her sister and her dad within
the same year, and we were on FaceTime and we
were talking and she uh got emotional and started crying
and just was talking her way through and was crying
(26:59):
and doing it. And I know that our first human
instinct is to be like, oh, don't cry, Oh it's okay,
But I act actual wouldn't even crying. I mean, I
was just talking and she's having a moment, and I'm
gonna hold this. I have the capacity. I'm gonna hold
this moment steady for her. And at the end of
what she was saying, she goes, thanks for not fixing
(27:23):
my tears or trying to fix what's me being sad.
Thank you, And I said I love you, You're welcome,
because I remember growing up my mom always saying tears
don't solve problems, tears don't fix anything. So I never
was allowed to grieve. I don't think I started grieving
(27:45):
until I turned to thirty, and that was almost four.
I'll be thirty four this year. And so it's interesting
what happens when we become adults and we have to
unlearn the things that we've picked up in childhood, and
then we have to model the way that we want
to be in the world without having an example. When
no one taught me how to be a mother, no
(28:06):
one taught me how to be norm and nurturing. I
had to figure that out on my own. No one
taught me how to hold space and not try to
fix someone's tears. I had to figure it out on
my own. And I think it's for me a part
of my healing and grief work is what did I
need that I didn't get And how do I hold
(28:26):
myself and my community in a way that I wish
that I was held. So I think that's really what
healing and calling in and grief and the intersection of
joy and everything. It's really like an emotional onion. Like
that's really kind of how I look at it. It's
so multifascinated as all these different stepping stones that bring
us home to ourselves. I love that image of holding
(28:47):
the moment steady for someone not jumping in to fix
something is so unusual because it is hard. It's the
way that we're trained right through every possible influx, Like
trained if somebody is having a moment, you need to
get them out of that moment. So not acting on
(29:07):
that impulse, right and and you know your friends saying
thank you for not fixing it, Like, it's such a
rarity to be able to in your emotions, in your truth,
in your grief, in whatever is going on, for you
to feel like you have the space to feel it
without being rushed out of it. That is the thing.
I wrote something about rushing this week, and I want
(29:29):
to read it to you because I was often rushed
as a child, and something that I'm learning what learning
not to do is rush in my life. So my
word of the year is a nourishment. And I am
deeply leaning into finding alignment and nourishment and slowing down.
(29:50):
And so can I reach you what I wrote about
please rushing. It says, give yourself permission to slow down.
Slow down in your relations and ships, slow down in rushing,
to say yes, slow down instead of immediately saying no.
Allow yourself to practice the sacred act of ease and
(30:10):
intentional processing. You don't have to know what's next today,
you don't have to know how you feel at this
very moment. You're allowed to pace yourself to think about things,
and you are allowed to process, release the idea that
you've got to know and solve and address things right now.
You don't slow down. I just think that that's so
(30:33):
important because we live in a world that teaches the
complete opposite, and so they just wonder what would happen
if more of us slowed steadied. Yeah, thank you for that.
I feel like there's that implied finish line in healing
work of any kind that means we have to keep
moving and we have to keep moving forward right that.
(30:56):
If you aren't actively working your healing, you're doing it wrong,
which is just such trash, total trash. It's not true
to lie, it's not true. That's not true. There's something
that you've said before that's sort of related to this.
Give yourself permission to heal from the same thing more
than once. I feel like those those are related sentiments.
(31:19):
What you just shared about slowing down and taking space
and making a nourishing pacing for yourself in your life,
and this idea that you can heal from the same
thing more than once. I mean, I think we're all
doing it every day. I think often about my husband
who lost his mom six years ago, and he said,
(31:43):
that is never not going to hurt, that is always
going to tear me up, and that is okay. So
giving ourselves permission to self soothed through those triggered moments,
through those super tender moments, through those deeply painful wounds,
I think it's how we take our power back. I
(32:06):
know for me, I struggle with a lot of childhood
trauma and neglect and abandonment and really harsh treatment from
my caretakers, and that will hurt me forever, especially as
I look at my children. I'm like, how could anyone
not want to just make things better and easeful and
(32:29):
loving for their child? And so that's inner child work
that I will be tending to and patching up and
giving kisses until I can't. I share things like that
because So many folks think healing is this arrival, but
really it's a forever love that teaches us and calls
(32:50):
us in to learn how to hold steady for ourselves.
I really that's what healing is. It's a practice, it's
a lifestyle practice, and it's so much more than the hurt.
It's also the joy Like. Healing has allowed me to
create a beautiful, loving home for my children, has allowed
me to be in deep partnership and friendship with my husband,
(33:15):
has allowed me to have really impactful, nourishing sisterhood friendships,
all because of the healing work I chose to do.
And that's joyous. So when I say healing is also
this radical act of joy like, that's what I mean.
It opens up so many doors for emotional expansion in
(33:36):
really beautiful ways. Yeah, it doesn't mean the thing that
the things that hurt don't hurt anymore. Yeah, because I
think if we don't allow ourselves to come into relationship
with the things that hurt, all of that energy goes
to suppressing it. We can't liberate the life force of
(33:56):
the things that hurt if we don't let them hurt.
That's the thing that's it. Yeah. Again, truth telling where
does it hurt. That's major. It's major, it is major.
And holding space for yourself. I'm going to come back
to that so many times that like steadying the moment
(34:18):
for yourself and for others, it's really for me, like
this is what builds a nourished, nourishing, joyful, creative life.
It is not a life that doesn't hurt. It's actually
a life that contains a lot of hurt. Because that
is true. Yeah, it's a bit of a leap, but
we're talking about pain that we carry and coming into
(34:41):
relationship with it. And I would love to widen our
lens out a little bit and talk about the pain
of the world, if that's okay with you. So I
remember seeing a post that you put up soon after
yet another mass shooting that happened in the last year,
and you wrote, I feel like I've been crying for
a lifetime. So the first question that I had for
(35:02):
this is like, how do we balance healing work and
a belief enjoy in the world such as it is.
I struggle with that, especially as a parent who sends
their children out into the world to go to school.
I think what has helped me soften some of the
(35:27):
worldly anxiety that I have is savoring the now in
the moment and being present with the right now. I mean,
I walked through the world with O c D depression
and anxiety as an adult. I take fifty of the
loft every day, and so I know that if I
(35:50):
don't hone in on some of the anxieties that I
can't carry, it will literally make me feel outside of myself.
And so when the last mass shooting happened with those
little kids at that elementary school, I was so sad,
(36:13):
like it hurt me on a different level, and I
wasn't one of the parents who lost their children. I
felt like all those children were my children, and all
of that sadness was my sadness, and all that pain
was my pain. And I really had to turn to
Pema Children's work and Tick Nakhan's work and try to
make sense of this is crazy that there's so much
(36:38):
pain in the world. Like I know those families wanted
the world to stop just for a second. But even
in that moment, people didn't know about the tragedy. People,
you know, some people were everybody, not some people. Everybody,
Like time goes on, and that's what's so wild to me.
(36:59):
I just lost my grandfather a month ago, and I
remember getting the news at the airport before I got
on my flight home to d C and wishing that
there was like a pause button. But the world I
was it was the most strange thing. I'm looking around
and everyone there's people laughing, there's people just life is happening,
(37:19):
and I am dealing with this loss. It is wild,
and so I think I don't want to say hope,
but I think knowing that all I can control is
myself is not always the most comforting thing, because I
wish I could control all these outside forces and keep
my baby safe and keep these these terrible things from
(37:41):
happening and stop people from dying, and like, of course,
but we can't. So it's like, how do we hold
the truth of that and still allow ourselves to live
and to find joy. Me and my husband talk about
this a lot, especially when it comes to underserved communities
and poverty and things like that, right, and so it
(38:02):
can be just deeply challenging to be like, WHOA, only
certain people had certain access to this, but so many
people don't have access. So it's been like how do
we It's like, I'm the type person. It's like, I
just want to fix the world, So let's figure out
how we can give everybody access, how we can take
everybody's pain. But that's just I wish that's how it works,
(38:22):
it's not how it works, and so I don't know.
I've just been holding a lot of space for the
duality of joy and grief because, as the Buddhists have said,
to live is to suffer. But how do we hold
ourselves through the suffering that we are inevitably going to
go through? And I don't have an answer, which is
probably why I'm rambling, But that's a really great question
(38:43):
to talk through because it's like I don't know, and
what do I know to be true? And how do
I process that? That's the thing there, Right, It's like
I always get so irritated with like Buddhism light right,
with like pain of like life is suffering, So stop
being so attached and it won't bug you. Right, This
really reductive, transactional interpretation, very loose interpretation of some really
(39:08):
powerful teaching. And I love the rambling way you just
describe that because it's like, there is so much pain
in the world, and there is probably not a lot
I can do about it. So what is what can
in my power? What can I do for myself, for
the close in community around me? How do I want
(39:29):
to be engaging in the world, are relating to the
world knowing that there is a metric ton of pain
that I can do nothing about. It's it really is
calling that that power of your own truth back to
yourself and not lying to yourself that you're okay with
the mess of the world or that you are powerless,
because that's also not true. Yeah, I feel that deeply,
(39:52):
and I think too, there's also this sense of I
don't know if it's guilt, uh maybe guilt where it's like, wow,
some people are gonna have it a lot worse than
I ever have, and that is terrible, and like, what
do we do, especially as someone who's a feeler. I'm
(40:15):
a feeler and I don't even watch I cannot watch
the news. I don't even listen to the news anymore.
I just can't. I can't do it. It was literally
draining my energy. I was just sad, and so as
I'm thinking about what we were just talking about, and
you mentioned like what can I do in my immediate space?
(40:36):
And I think my duty is to love on people,
is to love these kids and raise them to be kind, compassionate,
caring humans, and is to show up in my work
and to keep writing these books and to keep giving
away as many free books as I can when I can,
and to love on people. To smile at people when
(40:57):
I'm on my walks, to say hello to the cash year,
to ask how people are doing, to make eye contact,
like that's what I can do. And I know that
those things sound so small, and sometimes I'm like, that's
not enough. But then I go back to the target
that I always go to, and I go to the
same cashier and I asked her how she's doing, and
we sit and were talking, holding up the line for
(41:18):
ten minutes that she's telling me how she's doing, and
I'm listening and I'm holding steady and I'm listening, and
she's like, all right, baby, i'll see you next time.
Come back to my line. Like that is leaving the
world better. Maybe that made her whole day, you know,
And so like it's those little things that we can
do two do our part, be intentional with how we're
(41:42):
moving through the world. That's what That's really what I've
been leaning on doing How do how can I serve
by being intentional? Yeah, and holding steady at your point
in the world, in this day, in this moment, in
this relationship, with this situation in front of me. It's
not about pain or not pain. It's not about fixing
(42:03):
or not fixing. It's about how do I show up
and see the truth in this and hold study. I
love this. That is something that I feel like that
I can hold onto, and I hope that other people
can hold onto as well. I end every conversation during
the season with the same question. And you and I
have sort of traveled at the outskirts of hope off
(42:25):
and on during our whole time together. But I'm going
to ask you this question anyway. So, knowing what you
know and living what you've lived, what does hope look
like for you? It's a really beautiful question. What's coming
to mind is hope looks like the possibility of coming
(42:47):
home to myself, regardless of the season. I'm in the healing,
I'm in the joy, I'm in the grief I'm in
I hope that I can always find my way home
to myself into my center. So that's what hope looks
like for me. I love it, and this is a
really good place for us to close out our time
(43:08):
together because I'm going to go sit with your words
with myself for a while and see what comes up
into that moment. So we're gonna obviously link to your
book and your website and your social media in the
show notes for today's show. Is there anything else you
want people to know where to find you, what to
look for, what's coming up next for you? You can
find me at wherever they plug the show notes. I'm there.
(43:31):
I have a small emotional wellness group coaching session that's
coming up. It's a six week session that starts in
February and I'm really excited about that and I'll be
doing three more this year, so once of quarters you
can look out for that on Alex l dot com.
And if you want a newsletter from me, I write
a newsletter on sub stack called Gratitude Journal and it's
(43:55):
a fun little place to be and reflections there. So
if you can find me there too, awesome. We will
link to all of that stuff in the show notes. Everybody, Alex,
thank you so much for being here. Stay tuned. Everybody
will be back with your questions to carry with you
after this break each week, I leave you with some
(44:20):
questions to carry with you until we meet again. Now,
you know, it really struck me in this conversation was
when alex said, give yourself permission to heal from the
same thing more than once. So often I think we're
really hard on ourselves, like when old wounds or old
patterns are old habits come up and we're like, I
thought I did that work already. But it really is
(44:41):
true that nothing about being human is a linear do
it once and you're all done process. Really, nothing about
human is linear like that. Everything is a continuum. So
giving yourself permission to heal from the same thing more
than once, I really like that. How about you? What
(45:02):
stood out to you in this conversation with Alexel. Everybody's
going to take something different from today's show, but I
do hope you find something to hold onto. Hope really
is a crowdsourced thing, and I definitely want to hear
from you on all this. Check out Refuge in Grief
on Instagram or here after Pod on TikTok to see
video clips from the show and leave your thoughts in
(45:23):
the comments on those posts. Be sure to tag us
on your own social media accounts and use the hashtag
here after pod on all the platforms so we can
find you. We'd love to see where the show takes you. Everybody,
and remember to subscribe and leave a review. That stuff
helps more than you could ever know. If you want
(45:44):
to tell us how today's show felt for you, or
you have a request or a question for an upcoming episode,
send us an email. You can do that right from
the website. Megan Divine dot c O. We want to
hear from you. I want to hear from you. This show,
this world needs your voice. Together, we can make things
(46:04):
better even when they can't be made right. Want more Hereafter.
Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues.
As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday
grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk
about all of that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic
dismissive statements is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings,
(46:28):
professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that
You're Not Okay. Plus The Guided Journal for Grief at
Megan Divine dot c O. Hereafter with Megan Divine is
written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is
Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fossio. Logistical and social
media support from Micah, edited by Houston Tilly, Music provided
(46:52):
by Wave Crush and background noise provided by me being
antsy in the chair and the chair being squeaky. Oh.
Host
Megan Devine
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