May 21, 2024 • 51 mins
In this episode of The Conversation, best-selling author Anne Lamott talks about her newest book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love, her relationship with her son and grandson, and connects with Amanda on her earlier work, Bird by Bird, which greatly impacted Amanda’s sobriety journey. Anne addresses moments from her past when she unintentionally hurt others and offers insights into navigating tough moments. Additionally, Anne shares the impact and influence of her spiritual beliefs and the significance of self-love throughout the healing process.
IN THIS EPISODE:
- [2:38] Anne talks about the gift of sobriety
- [11:15] Amanda talks about the hope the book Bird by Bird gave her
- [17:56] Anne discusses the context of her new book, Somehow: Thoughts on Love, released on April 9th, 2024
- [30:13] Anne describes her methods of connecting to her higher power and helpful sayings that relate to her sobriety mindset
- [34:44] Stories and personal life examples from Anne’s new book
- [44.24] Lessons Anne has learned from life’s mistakes
- [47:09] Thoughts on recovery and how the earth is forgiveness school
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Anne Lamott’s journey includes making mistakes, writing, recovery, and self-love.
- We have the opportunity to determine our own paths, lean into forgiveness, and move forward.
BIOGRAPHY:
Anne Lamott is the author of twenty books, including the New York Times bestsellers Help, Thanks, Wow, Dusk, Night, Dawn, Traveling Mercies, and Bird by Bird, as well as seven novels. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee into the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California with her family.
RESOURCES:
Amazon - Purchase the Book - Somehow: Thoughts on Love
Thoughts on Love Book and Tour
Book Reporter - Website
Anne Lamott on Instagram
Anne Lamott on Facebook
Anne Lamott on X
About This Podcast:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to the conversation. I am so excited
about my guest this week, the incredible writer Anne LaMotte,
and is someone whose work has been in my life
for as long as I can remember. One of her
earlier books, Bird by Bird, was a great influence on
me and giving me the courage to begin to start writing. Today,
we're talking about her long term recovery as well as
(00:30):
her brand new book, which is currently a New York
Times bestseller. It is called Somehow Thoughts on Love. I
hope you enjoy this conversation with Anne. Thank you so
much for doing this.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh are you kidding? Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I know that you're about to start on a big
book tour, which you must be so used to after
twenty books.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm used to it, but I'm so much older than
I we been before, so you know, everything feels a
little bit more fraud you know than The airports have
deteriorated and I have to get help lifting my luggage
into the overhead, so I become blanched, you blah, and
sort of prey on young and strong young men who
(01:20):
were her why to help me? And so it's a
little different, I have to say, although I think I'm
pretty sure Blanche was drinking and you don't. Yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Big difference, big difference, be different.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, So well let's talk about that for a second.
So you've been you've been soba a very long time,
is that right? That's right?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Almost thirt ears?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, wow, congratulations, Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, that's in July seven. Yeah, in nineteen eighty six.
It is a long time. Has gone by very quickly,
although some years have been almost so forward to get through,
and some days, as you know, are just too long, kitchenful.
(02:10):
But you know, one day at a time, I just
haven't picked up a drink or a drug. And that's
a plan for today.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, I hear you. I got SOBA at twenty two,
So I've spent my whole life in recovery, a day
at a time. And yeah, that is the foundation for
absolutely everything in my life, as I believe it probably
is for you too.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Every single thing, every looking that has flowed, including my son,
my grandson, my marriage, my career, and actually my still
being alive, has grown from that miracle that I can stall.
Odds cranky for me got fished out of the slew
(02:57):
of active alcoholic some an addiction it's on our feet,
guided and nourished and accepted and helped.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
God, I know when I hear and I hear you
say that, it's it's really I echo that you know.
I am the product of the kindness and generosity of
strangers around the world who have just helped me, you know,
a day at a time to stay sobl whether they
know it or not, you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I know, and I think it's a great mystery of
my life. It's why I get to be sober alcoholic
because I just have not to type like, I don't
like gatherings. I like to be alone. I look bad
under a lot of different types of life. A loud
(03:53):
clapping just bothers the hell out of me. And you know,
the first six years that I was so the coffee
that people were offering me was just swill, before the
revolution of the late eighties where we started getting decent coffee.
And it's it's I'll go to this side of the grave.
(04:14):
I will not understand why I get to be one
of you in the sober community.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I know I've often thought about that, like why do
I get the gift of recovery? And there are so
many who don't and you know people have asked me
that as well, like what is it?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You know?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I could have easily been as statistic as so many
of us could have been. And sadly, the longer I
stay sober, you know, the more I have, the more
funerals I go to. But like, what is that kind
of life force inside me that allowed me, at age
twenty two to say I'm done and I need help
(04:56):
and to be able to have embraced you know, the
solutions and the tools that have kept me soba. I
don't know why me and not someone else. I still
haven't kind of worked that out. For me, it's the
mystery of grace.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
You know that grace is like spiritual WD forty and
when you are at your most clenched, and you might,
if you're lucky, and you might get spritched with this
crazy grace stuff. And for me, a lot of the time,
grace looks like exhaustion and was I was so exhausted.
(05:34):
But then wise, actually I had any more good ideas
and until I was ten years older. When I got soil,
I was thirty two, and company these new ideas for
how I could keep drinking, because I'd love to drink
and I don't you know, I don't like three or
four drinks, but I like a lot long headed, paired,
(05:57):
you know. And I date guys who don't mind that.
In the girl that she has to army crawl across
the room to retrieve the plate of cocaine.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You know, they think, oh they like actually men who
like it. I like that.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, yeah, good girls like us. And it was I
woke up and I I had thought, well, maybe it's
just a tequila tequila doesn't agree with me. Or I
shouldn't mix tequila with malt liquor. I think that's not
a good I'll try that, or it's good one. I'm
going to stick to just five or six social drinks
(06:33):
and the non habit forming marijuana that I smoked on
a daily basis for twenty years. Maybe some sleeping pills,
and then just to perk things up a little bit,
some speed, because I'm sure, I'm sure you had really
good boundaries with men when you were drinking, but they
have warm, pernal relationships with pharmacists, so I could get
ells and speed. I love speed, and I loved I
(06:56):
just love everything. My drug of choice is gener echa,
and so I had safing pills, and I had uppers.
I had the fabulous feed that came in capsules that
you just could unscrew and pour into your hand and
lick if you were out and needed just to let
all pick me up. So, I mean, it was just
so crazy. But on July seventh, n six, I lay
(07:20):
there and I had run out of a single good idea.
I had started to understand there was no code that
I was going to break that would let me have
five or six social drinks a night and not wake
up in deep shame and physical you know, madness, sickness
(07:43):
and madness and I and just you know most of all,
I know you understand this said, that's shame. And I
just later and I you know, my mom's from Liverpool,
and I think it's all over for England. I will
be able to drink again. I'll never dance again, I'll
never romance again, I'll never have casual sex again. I'll
(08:04):
never write again. That was a big thing. But the
alternative is that I'll be dead. So I think that
I think maybe I'm going to pick up that two
hundred pound phone and call the one sober person I
know who won't judge me. Won't do anything but come over,
make me a cup of tea, and drive around with
(08:25):
me until it's time to plug my nose and see
what the option is.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, so true, isn't it. The lack of judgment in
the recovery community has been a godsend for me because
my story, of course, is probably not that dissimilar to yours.
Alcoholic women, we tend to have, you know, common criteria
for our behaviors and you know, pathology, and it's so
(08:53):
comforting to me. It's so comforting to me that you know,
we all have, you know, the very similar feelings of
shame and less than all of that stuff. It has
really been the bomb for soothing absolutely every single wound,
(09:16):
including outside help that I've I'm sure you know, like
I did not get say so but this long without
outside help for sure. But yeah, it's the foundation, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah. And I just want to say to anyone out
there who was thinking, yeah, but I'll never if I
do that, if I try just to get so just
not to pick up a drink or drug utic I
absolutely believed, unshakably that I would never write it again
because the tradition in our culture is and your all
cultures is an writer's drength and that you need to
(09:49):
be a great writer. And most of the great writers
I read when I was coming up, we're alcoholic. And
I had a absolute believe I would never write again.
And the truth is I didn't write for nine months.
That it took everything I had in me just to
get through certain days and just to find out where
some sober alcoholic women were that day. And then one
(10:11):
day I wrote the best novel I've ever written, which
was my first sober novel. And it was harder because
I wasn't smoking the non habit wanna that I smoked
while I wrote the first three books. But it was like,
and I know you know what I'm talking about, It
was like the windows had been cleaned of the car,
the windshield and I saw and it was like all
(10:33):
of it. It certain not exactly as dramatic as when
Dorothy wakes up in Awez and opens the door and
the movie goes into color from black and white, but
it was an awakening, and I blinked awake one day
and I pushed back my sleeves and I sat down
and I started writing this novel that was called All
New People. And you know what, I was an all
(10:54):
new person, I really was. I was in Yeah, new paraglosses,
New paraglosses. Yeah. Now I'm into anyone listening who might
hear between the two of us the glimmer of hope
that it might work for if it worked for you.
I'm sure you were as bad as I was, but
just much younger. But but if people think, you know,
(11:17):
they're different, and the little ones or writer or where
they're well know this or that, No, everything that could
be better, and you're very good ideas for all other
people that they are just too stupid to accept and
begin implementing and all of that. And if you're sober,
you remember you could just start your new twenty four hours.
(11:38):
As soon as you remember that you do, and you
put on this better pair of glasses and you start
noticing everything this still works, everything that is still lovely,
that has always worked. I mean, the book somehow is
about everything that has ever worked before for me that
I wanted to write down for my son and grantson
for when I'm gone, that will almost certainly work again,
(12:01):
no matter the climate, no matter the political kitstroy certain
things work. But you nature remember to put on the
better pair of glasses.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Thank you for giving that that phrase some context, and
that is absolutely the context of where a new pair
of glasses comes from for those of us in recovery
who who live by that philosophy. So thank you for
explaining that. I just want to tell you that when
I before I got sober and I was at the
(12:33):
height of my addiction, I was married to a man
who was twelve years older than me, and I was
sixteen years old and he was twenty nine, and he
gave me bud By Bud And I had a school teacher,
well I had been in Juvie for a year at
that point, but I had one teacher who basically said
to me, you're never going to be much. You're never
(12:56):
going to have a life that amounts too much, because
you'll basically such a lost case. Maybe you could write,
that's the only thing I could think you could possibly do,
and yeah, that that husband gave me bird by Bird
and I have that dogged you know, it's got stuff
spilled on it. That book. I have that book still.
(13:19):
It was the first book that I ever got that
showed me a paw toward the possibility of a life.
Between that book and the teacher who said, you're not
going to do much other than maybe, right, So I
just want to tell you and that was a really,
really pivotal book for me.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
So thank you, oh, thank you for saying that. Wait,
you didn't say you were married at sixteen, did you? Yeah?
I was wow. Okay, I have no thoughts to your
opinion or on that, but you may have had tiny,
tiny unresolved issues phone yeah, healthy loved looks like I mean,
(14:01):
I was mentioning.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, I mean I still do. That's like a lifelong journey,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Well we'll talk yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
So the book that you're about to have come out,
it comes out on April ninth, and you turned seventy
on April eighth. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
No, that's my father would have turned one hundred and
one on April eighth, but in fact, two days later,
on April tenth, I will turn seventy. Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Wow, congratulations, Yeah, thank you. I'm weird art cool. Yeah,
and you've written twenty books. What is what is this one?
Can you give the listeners some context as to what
this book is about?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Well, so I said earlier, I started feeling so much
grief and fear about what the future for my son,
who's thirty five. I know a lot of people who
read operating instructions think that he must be like getting
close to twenty now, But he's thirty five almost, And
he had a son when he was nineteen, which had
(15:11):
not been my exact plans for him, which had include
board things like college and career and growing up. But
this child, Jack, who's almost fifteen now, who is the
greatest blessing, Oh my god, thank you good. But anyway,
I had such grief and fear. You know, I teach
Sunday school, I'll admit, and parents would come to be
(15:33):
in after class and they'd be crying, and they'd say,
you know, there was another school shooting. One of the
pieces and somehow is about Easter Sunday of the year
that there's a school shooting a few days earlier. And
they would say, what are we going to do? Nothing
is going to happen, to say the first the UN
Report on Climate change said years ago that we had
(15:53):
twelve years.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And nothing has changed.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And so he started writing for my son and grandson,
things that will work, no matter what that the outside
world looks like, no matter what their inside world. It
looks like certain things have always worked and almost certainly
will again. And I wanted to leave this all in
one place for when I'm gone. Well, as I wrote
(16:18):
these meditations and these pieces, some of them really funny,
some of them I mean, I think, and and some
of them like as deep as I can go, all
of them turned out to him have something to do
with love. One of the realms of love, self love,
community love, the passionate love of nature, romantic love, activism,
(16:39):
the love of the poor, the love of God. And
so little by little I discovered that I was writing
a book on love. And that's what somehow turned with
the books, somehow turned out to be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
That's that's beautiful that you started with the intention to
leave some words of wisdom, some insights for your son
and your grandson, and then those stories seemed together what
this book is at almost seventy Very shortly you'll be seventy.
(17:15):
Do you think that love is the ultimate answer, because
that is what we are taught that love is. You know,
the love is the key, do you?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I don't think I was not taught that I was
taught that I was raised by an intellectual atheists, and
I was taught to figure it out was the solution
to almost every problem. Now, those of us who are
sober sometimes are also involved in a sister program for
people with tiny control issues who have excellent, excellent ideas
(17:52):
for all other people on earth. And we say to
ourselves and each other, figure it out is not a
good slogan.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
About say that is what I am told regularly by
my community, that.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right, right, and so. But I was told as a
child figured out was a good solution. And I was
raised believing that if I lived in a certain way
which was beyond reproach, and if I observed perfectionism and
accepted what they said, which was said a B plus
was not a good grade, and the hope that there
(18:27):
was time in the quarter to raise it to an
an that that would offer some kind of protection and
past the path of perfectionism, the path of forward thrust,
doing better and better.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And so this love thing.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
My parents were very loving, and they did the best
they could, but they couldn't stand each other. So I
grew up by two brothers and they were married. My
parents were married for twenty seven years, and I grew
up in a very scary toxic household with alcoholism, and
it built codependence of my mother, my English mother, and
affairs and eating disorders and whatnot. However, God, in her
(19:08):
infinite mercy gave me a best friend whose mother was
a Christian science healer. Now my bothered who hated all Christians,
thought that Christian sciences were crazier than you absolutely had
to be. But I went. I was there all the time.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
She would leave.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Adams was my other mother. And what she was reading
as Mary Baker Eddie, who founded Christian Science, but who
was the mother of all new Thought, Mary Anne Williamson
and Eckhart Tolly and all of the New Thought teachers.
And so she would read that, and she'd read scripture
over her children and me every morning. And it was
(19:46):
about love. That God was love, Love was a synonym
for God, that love was divine mind, that there was
only love, you know, which is pretty much what Einstein says,
is that there's exactly one thing that were made of
surrounded by its energy, and it's moving at different speeds
like the six year old boy and a glaciers moving
(20:08):
at another, but they're only made of this one thing.
And I came to believe that the energy was love,
that it was, that it was whatever. I mean, God
is so charged, the word God is so char people
and they just run screaming for their cute little loves.
But I would say about half the people that come
(20:28):
to read my books or come to my readings and
run for their cute little lives from fundamentalist households, but
didn't give up on the idea that there was something
mabbolent in the universe and in their hearts that happened
to be unconditional. Welcome the great shalom that you are
(20:52):
as is loved and chosen. That's the only message I
teach my Sunday school kids is you are loved and chosen,
and you are a door by me, but by something
else that surrounds us, that in dwells us, that whispers
to us, that shares us when we cry out in
silence in the middle of the night, and so little
(21:16):
by little. Now you know what I don't I. You know,
I believe there's one mountain and that is some kind
of connection with something much bigger than my own rattle
pinball mine. One mountain, many many paths, and and that's
that's what I talk about. That's what I preach. That's
what I write about is is all of the different
(21:37):
traditions that have maybe the woman that I am today,
which is very flawed and imperfect. But you know what,
breaking through the perfectionism and accepting my rather hilarious and
great my perfect imperfection is what has kept me alive
and filled me and nurtured and guided.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Me every say, by the way, so your concept of
a higher power is one that also embraces and loves
your imperfection, which is really important for people to be
exposed to a concept that allows for that and embraces that.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Willie I believe, who is it one of the great
Irish poets to glory of God is the human fully alive?
And fully alive me means messing up a lot, you know.
And I write a few pieces on the street in
the book that are about majors grew ups, and one
(22:41):
of them very public and one of them deeply intimate
with a very beloved friend. And so fully alive means
like go welcome to the monkey house as you want
to get put it. And also, you know another writer,
I was shaped like Gabriel Gerci, and our kids said,
they're is our public life in our private life, some
(23:04):
people know you pretty intimately, and there's our secret life.
And it's in the secret life that it matters that
God adores me. You know, I do sometimes feel like
a walking personality disorder. In my secret life. My cross
to bear has been my jealousy of so many other
writers who I don't you know, I think they've done
(23:26):
too well, and jealousy and the endless judgment and you know,
and then every single alcoholic I've ever known or talked
to has this endless ping pong game going on inside
their head, which is the grandiosity and the narcissism, and
different than versus thinking that, you know, that's the terrible self,
(23:51):
thinking that we're a fraud, thinking that we're conning everybody,
thinking that we're just a piece of you know what.
And so it's in my secret life is where I
live with my higher power, who I do call God.
But but you know what, the acronyms I've heard over
the years are good orderly directions, which is what the
(24:13):
good orderly direction, which is what the Buddhists used, or
the agnostic shoes, or the great outdoors which the Pagans used,
or the grace over drama that the who knows what
use and that you know, in the literature of recovery,
there's a line that I'm finding some touch it actually
can make me tear up, which is had instead of
(24:33):
some sort of personal god, like a nice god who
wears socks and shoes, or or the big fairy fairy
dad in the sky with a long beard. There is
the phrase unexpected inner resource, and it's it's like deep
deep inside. I imagine that as a kind of glade,
(24:54):
you know, some grassy glade surrounded by eucalyptus trees where
there is really quiet and there is mystery, but there
is peace because in that we're not completely alone. Something
here's something draws near and we don't need to figure
it out. So I don't know if that answered your
(25:15):
original question.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Well, it's interesting that connection to the I like what
you talked about the unexpected inner resource. For most people,
the world is so hectic outside and inside, and so
it's hard. There's obviously so many modalities to help people
connect to that. But for you, what is the modality
(25:41):
or what do you do to help you connect to
your higher power? What is that? Is it meditation? Is
it prayer? Is it walking? In nature. What is it
for you?
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It's all of the above, you know, and it's also
having pitts. I've always written up the closest we come
to knowing the divine love is through our cats and dogs,
because they are just so hilariously unconditional and desperate for
our company, which is I think, what God is. I
(26:12):
heard someone say the other day that we always talk
about how we have a God shaped hole inside of
us and we try to throw in some fame and
some money and none of it what, none of it works.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
It's a it's hit if I love temporarily. But you
know what I first got chasing it though, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, when I first got sober. There is
a woman named Sharon, Sharon s who is helping me,
and she said, Annie, every day you have to ask yourself,
do you want to hit or do you want the serenity?
And I looked at her, I said she and I
want to hit. Yeah, I'm a drug hello, yeah, but
I really wanted the serenity and I've wanted it ever
(26:53):
since she said that, And so I have the habit.
Now I wake up and I say my prayer, I
just wake up by Santa Christ and my prayers are
help me not be a jerk today, to get out
of myself, to become a person for others. I know.
The secret of life is that if you want to
have loving feelings, which is what happened, is like you
(27:14):
do loving things. I learned that you take the action
of the insight followed. So I pray for that just
dumb to follow me. So I wake up, I say
my prayers, I fish around for my glasses. I get up,
and I let the dogs out to pee. And that
is how I connect with my higher power. And during
the day when I feel trubbled or stuck or up
(27:37):
tight or completely self absorbed or into the endless personality,
I do what you all have taught me to do.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I pick up the ten pound phone.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I stop, and I sit down, or do what I
call the sacramento plopage, and I pray the great prayer,
which is help. You know this, I am in a
hole that is too big for me to figure my
way out of. In view help. And you know what happens,
the phone ring, or the mail comes, or it tech drives,
(28:09):
or I remember to get outside, you know, And that
about ninety three percent of the time if I just
step out doors for five minutes and I look up.
It hits the reset button for me. You know, I'll
have a pastor who once said that you can trap
bees and mason jars with a drop of honey on
the bottom and no lid because they don't look up.
(28:32):
They just sort of walk around, bump on the floor
of the jar, bumping into the glass or to bitterly
because it don't look up. And so for me, that's
in my battered old toolbox. One of the main tools
is get outside, great outdoors, God, and look up or
look outside. Right now, it's pouring rain here in northern California,
(28:53):
and everywhere I look, the daffodils have come up, right,
And so I can also feel a lot of pity
for my predicament that it's early here, that you made
me get up really early. I can't use the heater
in my office because then you'll hear the hum, and
so I'm sort of cold and all that, and I'm looking.
I'm talking to you about my very, very literally favorite
(29:14):
subjects on earth with a sister in my life who
I hadn't met until now, And everywhere I look there's daffoodils.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, anyway, do we look at it as half empty
a half full, it's the half empty a half full.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah. Also yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say, Also,
you start hearing when you've been sober about twenty minutes
about the Native American story of the grandfather who tells
his grandson that every day when he wakes up, he
knows there's either there's a wolf that is like kind
of snarling or aggressive or frightening or and doing, and
(29:50):
then there's the wolf that's general and nurturing her cubs
and in the world. And which wolf do we feed?
You know? Then?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
So oh all right, yeah, thank you for sharing that.
You talked about your secret life, and I'm curious whether
any of the stories in your new book come from
that place of your secret life.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Oh God, I think you've read the book more recently
than I have, but because I don't read my work
once it's published. But that's at least three or four
stories about life, about lipping on the cosmic banana peel
and landing on my butt and fighting myself in the darkest,
(30:39):
shadowy realms of my being, which is the self loathing
and also the loathing from the outside world. A very
best friend who says to me, I don't want to
turn out like you. A horrible thing that I as
horrible mistake, an ugly mistake I made that went viral,
(31:00):
you know those sorts of things. And so, but my
secret life is stuff that I share with a kind
of widening pool of people, my husband and my best girlfriend,
and then I share it with a few people. Then
I share it with the people who help me stay
sober one day at time. I always share it immediately
with my son, who, grace of God, has thirteen years
(31:22):
clean of sober. Wow. I share it with a widening pool,
and pretty soon I'm telling it to people that I
don't even know that when they're going, oh my god,
thank you because I did something like that. I've been there,
Oh my God, I wanted to die. And then they
say to me, what did you do? And I tell
them the story, and I come to understand that all
(31:44):
of our secret stories are universal, and at some point
I feel confident to tell it to the public. So
there are about four stories about the ugly Gary, the
things that are revealed when you have no effective mental
defense against where life circumstances every so often takes you.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Can you give us a little overview on perhaps, you know,
pick one of those so that we can have an
idea of what one of those things is the youth.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Oh yeah, well, I think I alluded to it earlier
with the one story that I think was most devastating. Well,
there's two that was the most devastating. We're the one
where I have somebody I mentor spiritually an they're alcoholic,
And we were sitting on my couch and he had
come over as just a best family friend, someone who's
at all of our holiday meals, who was a really
(32:40):
central person in my child's life when he was little,
and he was talking about this woman who just trashes
him because a best friend, she doesn't trash him, but
she's constantly belittling him. He's bald, and he's chubby, and
he he doesn't make good choices with career and stuff
(33:01):
like that. And so tell them how I just said
one of those moments where I was not ground and
it seemed a good idea at the time to start
trashing this best friend of his, which he was kind
of doing. But you know, it's okay, Like if you
say horrible things about your brother when you're young, but
with somebody else does on the blacktop, and you beat
(33:22):
them up, right, And so I started saying these things
about his friend that I thought were obvious, and he
didn't quite respond then, And later that day he called
them and said, I don't want you to be my
mentor anymore, because I don't want to turn out like you.
And there was just like this awful silence, and we
hung up, and I understood what you do, well, you
(33:45):
understand when somebody said something awful for you, or publicly
when you get an awful review. And that was that
he alone could see who I actually am, and that
all the other people have been seduced by my persona
or my.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Needy place, yeah whatever.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
It was even the spar clear, the kind of tragic
you know, the little match girl neediness. And but he, alones,
guy Tim could see and express who I really am,
two faced and a backstep or just just a repellent.
He was my deepest fhere, that deep insight I'm disgusting.
And so the story is about then what?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, then what then we'll do with that?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Where do you even start?
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And well you start, well, you make amends. You have
to make amends.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
You gotta no, no, no, no, no no, what you
do is you groveled. And she you know, there's that
thing that that there's three responses. There's fight or flight
or freeze right in the face of and I was
gonna say, or fawn, which I mentioned in somehow, and
what I my default is that I fawn, and I
(34:52):
immediately made amends by email. And then the person didn't respond.
And then I did what any person in the right
mind would do. I started to cry. Now my culture
and you sound English, are you? Yeah? I am, okay, yeah,
so my mother is. And so what you learn in
and I mean no offense to your people, But in
(35:13):
our house, you don't cry and you don't get angry,
and you do either of those things, and you get
sent to your room without eating, hence the tiny lifelong
eating disorder. But the women who have guided me now
for almost thirty eight years said cruelly, when you're sad, cry,
it will bathe you, it will hydrate you, it will
(35:34):
baptize you. And cry and get angry. And so though
I unlearned my childhood beginning of the day, I got
sober and I started to cry, and then I went
and I found my husband, and then I called my
best friend and my good idea with my best friend
was to call this man Tim and beg for forgiveness
(35:55):
and grubble and fun. And my best friend, who's been
sober as long as I have, said, maybe tomorrow, just
for today, maybe not, let's see. I think that would
be a detour away from what is being offered to you. Yeah,
as an opportunity for the deep die and the healing.
(36:17):
And so that's what I did, and I did what
was appropriate. It was which I felt terrible, but I
felt a little bit better. So and then the story
goes on. But can I tell the other story? Well, yeah,
of degradation. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's pretty somehow this book. Okay,
So ten years ago or so, there was a very
(36:38):
famous transgendered person who politically was one hundred and eighty
degrees away from where I am, which is to say,
a person who loved Trump and everything. And I had
it in for her. And I was with my really
long term Friday friend in fifty years and she tweeted
something just truly discussed about this woman, and I retweeted
(37:02):
it and it went viral. And my son has a
very close transgendered man friend, and my son just lost
his mind that I had done this, and I tugged
my heels in for a day. And then I got
the severity of the injury I had caused to an
(37:23):
entire community and to my child. And then I started
dancing as fast as I could. But I was revealed
to be no better than a raise sister, a sexist,
a biggoted everything I have spent my life fighting against,
and that all twenty books would testify to. But there
it was, and it was. It went big, It went big.
(37:48):
It made it into so many newspapers and podcasts, and
so that story is about, now, what what do you
do when you have screwed up at that level? Oh,
you do the same thing you try. You grovel and
fun and beg and you hate yourself.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
That's the main thing.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
You instantly hate yourself, and you believe that anything anyone
has ever.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Said is bad. It is true, and it's.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Finally been revealed, and luckily it's been revealed to half
a million people this time. And so the story is
and I don't want to ruin for it, but it's like, now,
what where do you even begin? Well, we're powerless over people,
places and things, but we can do this one crazy
thing that's in the toolbox, which is that we can
(38:37):
do the self love, we can take the action because
I'm happy English. You begin with a cup of tea,
of course, and you stroke your own shoulder and you say, Anny,
you're human and this is a nightmare and this too
show pass and love is going to heal this, and
you don't and figure it out as a bad slogan
(38:59):
and you don't need to know right now how love
will heal this, but I promise you it will.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Those are two fantastic stories and examples of of you
know how, just being human we can we can make
bad choices. It doesn't mean we're bad people. It means
we were We've made bad choices at times, which I
have to tell myself all the time. I'm not a
bad person. I made a bad choice. And yeah, wow,
(39:30):
do you feel like you got the you learned the
lesson from those things? Because I feel like if I
don't learn the lesson, the universe just knocks even louder.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Oh I know, I hate it. Oh so annoying. I
think it's a bad system. It is.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
I want to change it.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
If I were God's West Coast representative, which I think
I would be really good at because I have all
these excellent ideas for other people. But I would have
a magical cal and once you pretty much sort of
most of the time got it, you would be tapped
by God's magic wand and then you would be not
ever do that again. But the way it works is,
(40:11):
I really think God kind of gently clears his or
her throat and kind of their throat, let's say, and
nudges me. It's something weird and bad happens, and I
come through it. And except that I go back to
try to control people or manipulate people, or I diss
people or whatever that days, you know, the character defect
(40:32):
dejure is. And then God comes at me a little
bit harder. And then I think finally that they start.
God just starts drinking, you know, and it starts going,
oh my God, just and a lot is I'm on
my last nerve, God says, and then knocks me really hard.
And I thick with these two stories. I got knocked
(40:54):
really hard. And the only the message is, I mean,
I don't write messages. Ammuel Goldwyn, the producer, finally said
famously said in the forties, if you have a message,
send a telegram. But the story is about coming back
to friendliness with your screwed up needy you know, controlling
(41:18):
mistake made human merely being. As Ee Cominges put it,
you know, I love that bumper stick or I usually
don't push bumper stickers on people, but you've seen it.
I'm sure it says we're not human beings having spiritual experiences.
We're spiritual beings having human experiences. Yeah. And we're both
(41:38):
writers and we have these public lives. I'm sure you
have equivalent stories. Or you have said something that you
can't take back and it's gone out to one hundred
thousand people, and the story then is then what? And
the solution is always somehow about love?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, I mean, I'm show you're familiar with Kristin Neff's work,
uh huh about about self compassion, and it is one
of the hardest things that I, on a daily basis
have to do. Even this morning, I found myself getting
into a negative loop about my weight. Got a girl, yeah,
(42:23):
a PEX book, and then I was like, stop talking
to yourself like that. You know, it's been years since
I have done that, and it started this morning and
I was like, oh, there it is. There it is.
And practicing self compassion is you know that it's a
it's a daily it's a daily project.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
The self love. Yeah, the you know, there's back to
recovery for one second. There's this incredible tool that I
was gifted with and it's called the three a's. Do
you know this one? The three a's are awareness, awareness,
accept an, acceptance and action. Yeah. And so the awareness is, Oh,
(43:04):
I'm doing it again. I'm saying I should do, I
should have been, I should be? You should you get
you should yourself? You know you get should all over yourself?
You do the awareness? Oh my god, I'm telling myself
this really mean thing.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You wouldn't say to me when if we meet in
New York when I'm a booked. You know what, Annie,
I just wonder if you even go to the gym
at all. You know, you wouldn't say that to me.
You wouldn't say, I notice that you're eating like rice
and beans, which is really very high carb. And I
wonder you know what you would say with me is God,
I think you're perfect. I think you are amazing. I
(43:41):
love your body. I hope I look like you when
I'm saying okay, So the awareness is you're not there.
You've got the bad glasses on with yourself, right. The
awareness is almost always that you've got the bad pair
of glass on. Okay. The acceptance is that the culture,
every step of the way has told you certain things
about yourself. My mother was very heavy, so I had
(44:01):
and my dad hated women. My dad preferred long legged
women with big bus which is who he always had
affair switch. Of course, I accept that the culture, every
step of the way has told me I have to
look a certain way and be a certain way and
achieve at a certain level, or I have no protection
and everybody can see that I'm just this skinny, weird,
(44:24):
little or overweight old lady did it up? And so
I accept that.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Go well, don let's just pause for a second, because
the unfortunate reality is that the woman's physique that you
describe with long legs and big boobs is the sex
and desirability is the number one currency in the world.
I wish it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
No, it always was. I came up in that era.
I came up in the era where Playboy was just
getting off the ground. In nineteen sixty I was six
years old and the men started leaving the women in
our community, the younger women who didn't have the scars
of childhood or the or whatever. But I mean I
have marinated like a rump roast to that and the
(45:11):
broth of a fixation on what a women's body should
or should not look like. Okay, but back to acceptance.
So I accept this, and I put on pants that
fit instead of the pants that make me look thinn
or that are too tight. You know, the world has
got enough judgment on me without my pants getting in
on it. You know, I wear welcoming pants. So now
(45:32):
the third thing is the actioning pants, welcoming pants.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
And I'm then hiring my welcoming pants too, are you No,
I'm wearing my I'm not.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I'm wearing pants that are a little tight that I'm
thinking of wearing on book tour because they make me
look thin.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
It's a long road back from that kind of body
judgment and self loathing. So I'm just trying to break
them in a little, just to be honest. Okay, And
then there's the acceptance. Well, what do you do. You
get a cup of tea? You start with that, You
touch your own shoulder. I talk to me the way
I talk to you who have never met in person,
and I always say, God, you are unbelievably gorgeous and fabulous,
(46:11):
and who epping cares what you look like, because what
you and I are bonding at is the level of
spirit and heart and miracle. And so let's just take
a minute and physically shake that off like wet dogs.
It got on us this morning. That shake it off,
and you do the loving action. And then again it
(46:31):
goes back to you want to have loving feelings about yourself,
do loving things. You want to have loving feelings in
the world.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Take a bag of.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Food over to the food pantry in the more deprived
parts of the county. You know, call your strangest aunt
and stay on the phone with her because she's so lowly,
and stay on the phone, which she goes into full weirdness,
you know, and maga, and just stay on the phone
and then get off, tell her you love her, and
go for a walk. And so it's a awareness acceptance action.
(47:01):
And so you and I this side of the grave
are going to have really bad thoughts about ourselves. It
just comes with the territory. It just comes from being human.
It comes with having a particular kind of alcoholic mental illness,
that where the healing is taking a flighty bit longer
than it. Oh, and that is the work that we're
(47:23):
here for. Earth is forgiveness school, you know. And when
you have forgiven them people who have hurt you most,
then there's old darling mixed stuff. Yeah, there's you, there's stiff,
there's yeah. And and some days go better than others.
And as I said, some days they're just too long.
And we do the best.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
We can on any given day.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
And but the main thing that guides me is that
when I catch myself in the awareness that I'm shaming
myself about my body or about you know, something that
I did this like after I get off the talking
with you, what I meant to say, or what I
should have said to probably win over more readers, whatever.
Then what we do is talk to ourselves the way
(48:08):
that we would talk to each other, the way I
would talk to a friend, even a casual friend. We
I would talk to them gently, I would talk to
them in a certain way, not the way I talk
to myself. And so I change channels from the bad
radio station to the sweeter one, the gentler one, the
more compassionate one. The more everybody's in the same boat.
(48:28):
You know that everybody scared a lot. Everybody has a
lot of terrible, terrible self esteem. Everybody has a raging ego.
Everybody has lost somebody that they can't live without, you know.
And so we approach each other as as if it's
the er. You know. We sit down except people in
the er, and we say, do you want me to
(48:48):
get you a glass of water? You know, and you
need to talk and I can listen. I got a minute.
We talk to people that way instead of the way
that our parents talk to us or the culture talk
to us.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yes, yeah, it's a lot. You're absolutely right, it's a
lot of reprogramming a day at a time. And by
the way, and I think that you put so much
of yourselves into your work, and I think you know,
certainly through this conversation. What I find that people connect
the most with with the interviews that I do, are
(49:23):
when people really do share their truest selves. Because you
will have done hundreds of interviews about this book on
this press talk, and you'll be saying the same old
stuff that people can hear on twenty thirty different podcasts.
What I like doing is sharing with people a different
(49:43):
experience of somebody, and that's what I think we've done
here today. And I'm really grateful I got to speak
to you at the beginning and not at the end
where you're like, oh my god, I've told all my
stories and I'm so over this. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I can't believe you've had be on your show.
It's really an honor. This is Yeah, this is the
stuff I would love to talk about all day, every
day and get to on good days. And so thank
you for helping me start out my morning with you.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
Thank you for saying yes, and thank you for a
really wonderful conversation. And I am very excited for the
people who you know, love my show to hear your
life experience and for people to read your book. Thank
you so much. Thank you so much for listening to
(50:35):
that fantastic episode. Please like subscribe and all that business.
It does really help the podcast, and most importantly, come
join me on substack. Substack is where I'm showing the
video of the entire episode that you just listen to.
So find me on substack if you want to dig
in a bit deeper to the subjects that we talked
(50:56):
about in this episode. See you there,
Hello, and welcome to the conversation. I am so excited
about my guest this week, the incredible writer Anne LaMotte,
and is someone whose work has been in my life
for as long as I can remember. One of her
earlier books, Bird by Bird, was a great influence on
me and giving me the courage to begin to start writing. Today,
we're talking about her long term recovery as well as
(00:30):
her brand new book, which is currently a New York
Times bestseller. It is called Somehow Thoughts on Love. I
hope you enjoy this conversation with Anne. Thank you so
much for doing this.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh are you kidding? Thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I know that you're about to start on a big
book tour, which you must be so used to after
twenty books.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm used to it, but I'm so much older than
I we been before, so you know, everything feels a
little bit more fraud you know than The airports have
deteriorated and I have to get help lifting my luggage
into the overhead, so I become blanched, you blah, and
sort of prey on young and strong young men who
(01:20):
were her why to help me? And so it's a
little different, I have to say, although I think I'm
pretty sure Blanche was drinking and you don't. Yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Big difference, big difference, be different.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, So well let's talk about that for a second.
So you've been you've been soba a very long time,
is that right? That's right?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Almost thirt ears?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, wow, congratulations, Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, that's in July seven. Yeah, in nineteen eighty six.
It is a long time. Has gone by very quickly,
although some years have been almost so forward to get through,
and some days, as you know, are just too long, kitchenful.
(02:10):
But you know, one day at a time, I just
haven't picked up a drink or a drug. And that's
a plan for today.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yeah, I hear you. I got SOBA at twenty two,
So I've spent my whole life in recovery, a day
at a time. And yeah, that is the foundation for
absolutely everything in my life, as I believe it probably
is for you too.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Every single thing, every looking that has flowed, including my son,
my grandson, my marriage, my career, and actually my still
being alive, has grown from that miracle that I can stall.
Odds cranky for me got fished out of the slew
(02:57):
of active alcoholic some an addiction it's on our feet,
guided and nourished and accepted and helped.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
God, I know when I hear and I hear you
say that, it's it's really I echo that you know.
I am the product of the kindness and generosity of
strangers around the world who have just helped me, you know,
a day at a time to stay sobl whether they
know it or not, you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I know, and I think it's a great mystery of
my life. It's why I get to be sober alcoholic
because I just have not to type like, I don't
like gatherings. I like to be alone. I look bad
under a lot of different types of life. A loud
(03:53):
clapping just bothers the hell out of me. And you know,
the first six years that I was so the coffee
that people were offering me was just swill, before the
revolution of the late eighties where we started getting decent coffee.
And it's it's I'll go to this side of the grave.
(04:14):
I will not understand why I get to be one
of you in the sober community.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
I know I've often thought about that, like why do
I get the gift of recovery? And there are so
many who don't and you know people have asked me
that as well, like what is it?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You know?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I could have easily been as statistic as so many
of us could have been. And sadly, the longer I
stay sober, you know, the more I have, the more
funerals I go to. But like, what is that kind
of life force inside me that allowed me, at age
twenty two to say I'm done and I need help
(04:56):
and to be able to have embraced you know, the
solutions and the tools that have kept me soba. I
don't know why me and not someone else. I still
haven't kind of worked that out. For me, it's the
mystery of grace.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
You know that grace is like spiritual WD forty and
when you are at your most clenched, and you might,
if you're lucky, and you might get spritched with this
crazy grace stuff. And for me, a lot of the time,
grace looks like exhaustion and was I was so exhausted.
(05:34):
But then wise, actually I had any more good ideas
and until I was ten years older. When I got soil,
I was thirty two, and company these new ideas for
how I could keep drinking, because I'd love to drink
and I don't you know, I don't like three or
four drinks, but I like a lot long headed, paired,
(05:57):
you know. And I date guys who don't mind that.
In the girl that she has to army crawl across
the room to retrieve the plate of cocaine.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
You know, they think, oh they like actually men who
like it. I like that.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, yeah, good girls like us. And it was I
woke up and I I had thought, well, maybe it's
just a tequila tequila doesn't agree with me. Or I
shouldn't mix tequila with malt liquor. I think that's not
a good I'll try that, or it's good one. I'm
going to stick to just five or six social drinks
(06:33):
and the non habit forming marijuana that I smoked on
a daily basis for twenty years. Maybe some sleeping pills,
and then just to perk things up a little bit,
some speed, because I'm sure, I'm sure you had really
good boundaries with men when you were drinking, but they
have warm, pernal relationships with pharmacists, so I could get
ells and speed. I love speed, and I loved I
(06:56):
just love everything. My drug of choice is gener echa,
and so I had safing pills, and I had uppers.
I had the fabulous feed that came in capsules that
you just could unscrew and pour into your hand and
lick if you were out and needed just to let
all pick me up. So, I mean, it was just
so crazy. But on July seventh, n six, I lay
(07:20):
there and I had run out of a single good idea.
I had started to understand there was no code that
I was going to break that would let me have
five or six social drinks a night and not wake
up in deep shame and physical you know, madness, sickness
(07:43):
and madness and I and just you know most of all,
I know you understand this said, that's shame. And I
just later and I you know, my mom's from Liverpool,
and I think it's all over for England. I will
be able to drink again. I'll never dance again, I'll
never romance again, I'll never have casual sex again. I'll
(08:04):
never write again. That was a big thing. But the
alternative is that I'll be dead. So I think that
I think maybe I'm going to pick up that two
hundred pound phone and call the one sober person I
know who won't judge me. Won't do anything but come over,
make me a cup of tea, and drive around with
(08:25):
me until it's time to plug my nose and see
what the option is.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, so true, isn't it. The lack of judgment in
the recovery community has been a godsend for me because
my story, of course, is probably not that dissimilar to yours.
Alcoholic women, we tend to have, you know, common criteria
for our behaviors and you know, pathology, and it's so
(08:53):
comforting to me. It's so comforting to me that you know,
we all have, you know, the very similar feelings of
shame and less than all of that stuff. It has
really been the bomb for soothing absolutely every single wound,
(09:16):
including outside help that I've I'm sure you know, like
I did not get say so but this long without
outside help for sure. But yeah, it's the foundation, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah. And I just want to say to anyone out
there who was thinking, yeah, but I'll never if I
do that, if I try just to get so just
not to pick up a drink or drug utic I
absolutely believed, unshakably that I would never write it again
because the tradition in our culture is and your all
cultures is an writer's drength and that you need to
(09:49):
be a great writer. And most of the great writers
I read when I was coming up, we're alcoholic. And
I had a absolute believe I would never write again.
And the truth is I didn't write for nine months.
That it took everything I had in me just to
get through certain days and just to find out where
some sober alcoholic women were that day. And then one
(10:11):
day I wrote the best novel I've ever written, which
was my first sober novel. And it was harder because
I wasn't smoking the non habit wanna that I smoked
while I wrote the first three books. But it was like,
and I know you know what I'm talking about, It
was like the windows had been cleaned of the car,
the windshield and I saw and it was like all
(10:33):
of it. It certain not exactly as dramatic as when
Dorothy wakes up in Awez and opens the door and
the movie goes into color from black and white, but
it was an awakening, and I blinked awake one day
and I pushed back my sleeves and I sat down
and I started writing this novel that was called All
New People. And you know what, I was an all
(10:54):
new person, I really was. I was in Yeah, new paraglosses,
New paraglosses. Yeah. Now I'm into anyone listening who might
hear between the two of us the glimmer of hope
that it might work for if it worked for you.
I'm sure you were as bad as I was, but
just much younger. But but if people think, you know,
(11:17):
they're different, and the little ones or writer or where
they're well know this or that, No, everything that could
be better, and you're very good ideas for all other
people that they are just too stupid to accept and
begin implementing and all of that. And if you're sober,
you remember you could just start your new twenty four hours.
(11:38):
As soon as you remember that you do, and you
put on this better pair of glasses and you start
noticing everything this still works, everything that is still lovely,
that has always worked. I mean, the book somehow is
about everything that has ever worked before for me that
I wanted to write down for my son and grantson
for when I'm gone, that will almost certainly work again,
(12:01):
no matter the climate, no matter the political kitstroy certain
things work. But you nature remember to put on the
better pair of glasses.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Thank you for giving that that phrase some context, and
that is absolutely the context of where a new pair
of glasses comes from for those of us in recovery
who who live by that philosophy. So thank you for
explaining that. I just want to tell you that when
I before I got sober and I was at the
(12:33):
height of my addiction, I was married to a man
who was twelve years older than me, and I was
sixteen years old and he was twenty nine, and he
gave me bud By Bud And I had a school teacher,
well I had been in Juvie for a year at
that point, but I had one teacher who basically said
to me, you're never going to be much. You're never
(12:56):
going to have a life that amounts too much, because
you'll basically such a lost case. Maybe you could write,
that's the only thing I could think you could possibly do,
and yeah, that that husband gave me bird by Bird
and I have that dogged you know, it's got stuff
spilled on it. That book. I have that book still.
(13:19):
It was the first book that I ever got that
showed me a paw toward the possibility of a life.
Between that book and the teacher who said, you're not
going to do much other than maybe, right, So I
just want to tell you and that was a really,
really pivotal book for me.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
So thank you, oh, thank you for saying that. Wait,
you didn't say you were married at sixteen, did you? Yeah?
I was wow. Okay, I have no thoughts to your
opinion or on that, but you may have had tiny,
tiny unresolved issues phone yeah, healthy loved looks like I mean,
(14:01):
I was mentioning.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, I mean I still do. That's like a lifelong journey,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Well we'll talk yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
So the book that you're about to have come out,
it comes out on April ninth, and you turned seventy
on April eighth. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
No, that's my father would have turned one hundred and
one on April eighth, but in fact, two days later,
on April tenth, I will turn seventy. Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Wow, congratulations, Yeah, thank you. I'm weird art cool. Yeah,
and you've written twenty books. What is what is this one?
Can you give the listeners some context as to what
this book is about?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Well, so I said earlier, I started feeling so much
grief and fear about what the future for my son,
who's thirty five. I know a lot of people who
read operating instructions think that he must be like getting
close to twenty now, But he's thirty five almost, And
he had a son when he was nineteen, which had
(15:11):
not been my exact plans for him, which had include
board things like college and career and growing up. But
this child, Jack, who's almost fifteen now, who is the
greatest blessing, Oh my god, thank you good. But anyway,
I had such grief and fear. You know, I teach
Sunday school, I'll admit, and parents would come to be
(15:33):
in after class and they'd be crying, and they'd say,
you know, there was another school shooting. One of the
pieces and somehow is about Easter Sunday of the year
that there's a school shooting a few days earlier. And
they would say, what are we going to do? Nothing
is going to happen, to say the first the UN
Report on Climate change said years ago that we had
(15:53):
twelve years.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And nothing has changed.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And so he started writing for my son and grandson,
things that will work, no matter what that the outside
world looks like, no matter what their inside world. It
looks like certain things have always worked and almost certainly
will again. And I wanted to leave this all in
one place for when I'm gone. Well, as I wrote
(16:18):
these meditations and these pieces, some of them really funny,
some of them I mean, I think, and and some
of them like as deep as I can go, all
of them turned out to him have something to do
with love. One of the realms of love, self love,
community love, the passionate love of nature, romantic love, activism,
(16:39):
the love of the poor, the love of God. And
so little by little I discovered that I was writing
a book on love. And that's what somehow turned with
the books, somehow turned out to be beautiful.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
That's that's beautiful that you started with the intention to
leave some words of wisdom, some insights for your son
and your grandson, and then those stories seemed together what
this book is at almost seventy Very shortly you'll be seventy.
(17:15):
Do you think that love is the ultimate answer, because
that is what we are taught that love is. You know,
the love is the key, do you?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I don't think I was not taught that I was
taught that I was raised by an intellectual atheists, and
I was taught to figure it out was the solution
to almost every problem. Now, those of us who are
sober sometimes are also involved in a sister program for
people with tiny control issues who have excellent, excellent ideas
(17:52):
for all other people on earth. And we say to
ourselves and each other, figure it out is not a
good slogan.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
About say that is what I am told regularly by
my community, that.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right, right, and so. But I was told as a
child figured out was a good solution. And I was
raised believing that if I lived in a certain way
which was beyond reproach, and if I observed perfectionism and
accepted what they said, which was said a B plus
was not a good grade, and the hope that there
(18:27):
was time in the quarter to raise it to an
an that that would offer some kind of protection and
past the path of perfectionism, the path of forward thrust,
doing better and better.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
And so this love thing.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
My parents were very loving, and they did the best
they could, but they couldn't stand each other. So I
grew up by two brothers and they were married. My
parents were married for twenty seven years, and I grew
up in a very scary toxic household with alcoholism, and
it built codependence of my mother, my English mother, and
affairs and eating disorders and whatnot. However, God, in her
(19:08):
infinite mercy gave me a best friend whose mother was
a Christian science healer. Now my bothered who hated all Christians,
thought that Christian sciences were crazier than you absolutely had
to be. But I went. I was there all the time.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
She would leave.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Adams was my other mother. And what she was reading
as Mary Baker Eddie, who founded Christian Science, but who
was the mother of all new Thought, Mary Anne Williamson
and Eckhart Tolly and all of the New Thought teachers.
And so she would read that, and she'd read scripture
over her children and me every morning. And it was
(19:46):
about love. That God was love, Love was a synonym
for God, that love was divine mind, that there was
only love, you know, which is pretty much what Einstein says,
is that there's exactly one thing that were made of
surrounded by its energy, and it's moving at different speeds
like the six year old boy and a glaciers moving
(20:08):
at another, but they're only made of this one thing.
And I came to believe that the energy was love,
that it was, that it was whatever. I mean, God
is so charged, the word God is so char people
and they just run screaming for their cute little loves.
But I would say about half the people that come
(20:28):
to read my books or come to my readings and
run for their cute little lives from fundamentalist households, but
didn't give up on the idea that there was something
mabbolent in the universe and in their hearts that happened
to be unconditional. Welcome the great shalom that you are
(20:52):
as is loved and chosen. That's the only message I
teach my Sunday school kids is you are loved and chosen,
and you are a door by me, but by something
else that surrounds us, that in dwells us, that whispers
to us, that shares us when we cry out in
silence in the middle of the night, and so little
(21:16):
by little. Now you know what I don't I. You know,
I believe there's one mountain and that is some kind
of connection with something much bigger than my own rattle
pinball mine. One mountain, many many paths, and and that's
that's what I talk about. That's what I preach. That's
what I write about is is all of the different
(21:37):
traditions that have maybe the woman that I am today,
which is very flawed and imperfect. But you know what,
breaking through the perfectionism and accepting my rather hilarious and
great my perfect imperfection is what has kept me alive
and filled me and nurtured and guided.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Me every say, by the way, so your concept of
a higher power is one that also embraces and loves
your imperfection, which is really important for people to be
exposed to a concept that allows for that and embraces that.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Willie I believe, who is it one of the great
Irish poets to glory of God is the human fully alive?
And fully alive me means messing up a lot, you know.
And I write a few pieces on the street in
the book that are about majors grew ups, and one
(22:41):
of them very public and one of them deeply intimate
with a very beloved friend. And so fully alive means
like go welcome to the monkey house as you want
to get put it. And also, you know another writer,
I was shaped like Gabriel Gerci, and our kids said,
they're is our public life in our private life, some
(23:04):
people know you pretty intimately, and there's our secret life.
And it's in the secret life that it matters that
God adores me. You know, I do sometimes feel like
a walking personality disorder. In my secret life. My cross
to bear has been my jealousy of so many other
writers who I don't you know, I think they've done
(23:26):
too well, and jealousy and the endless judgment and you know,
and then every single alcoholic I've ever known or talked
to has this endless ping pong game going on inside
their head, which is the grandiosity and the narcissism, and
different than versus thinking that, you know, that's the terrible self,
(23:51):
thinking that we're a fraud, thinking that we're conning everybody,
thinking that we're just a piece of you know what.
And so it's in my secret life is where I
live with my higher power, who I do call God.
But but you know what, the acronyms I've heard over
the years are good orderly directions, which is what the
(24:13):
good orderly direction, which is what the Buddhists used, or
the agnostic shoes, or the great outdoors which the Pagans used,
or the grace over drama that the who knows what
use and that you know, in the literature of recovery,
there's a line that I'm finding some touch it actually
can make me tear up, which is had instead of
(24:33):
some sort of personal god, like a nice god who
wears socks and shoes, or or the big fairy fairy
dad in the sky with a long beard. There is
the phrase unexpected inner resource, and it's it's like deep
deep inside. I imagine that as a kind of glade,
(24:54):
you know, some grassy glade surrounded by eucalyptus trees where
there is really quiet and there is mystery, but there
is peace because in that we're not completely alone. Something
here's something draws near and we don't need to figure
it out. So I don't know if that answered your
(25:15):
original question.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Well, it's interesting that connection to the I like what
you talked about the unexpected inner resource. For most people,
the world is so hectic outside and inside, and so
it's hard. There's obviously so many modalities to help people
connect to that. But for you, what is the modality
(25:41):
or what do you do to help you connect to
your higher power? What is that? Is it meditation? Is
it prayer? Is it walking? In nature. What is it
for you?
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It's all of the above, you know, and it's also
having pitts. I've always written up the closest we come
to knowing the divine love is through our cats and dogs,
because they are just so hilariously unconditional and desperate for
our company, which is I think, what God is. I
(26:12):
heard someone say the other day that we always talk
about how we have a God shaped hole inside of
us and we try to throw in some fame and
some money and none of it what, none of it works.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
It's a it's hit if I love temporarily. But you
know what I first got chasing it though, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, when I first got sober. There is
a woman named Sharon, Sharon s who is helping me,
and she said, Annie, every day you have to ask yourself,
do you want to hit or do you want the serenity?
And I looked at her, I said she and I
want to hit. Yeah, I'm a drug hello, yeah, but
I really wanted the serenity and I've wanted it ever
(26:53):
since she said that, And so I have the habit.
Now I wake up and I say my prayer, I
just wake up by Santa Christ and my prayers are
help me not be a jerk today, to get out
of myself, to become a person for others. I know.
The secret of life is that if you want to
have loving feelings, which is what happened, is like you
(27:14):
do loving things. I learned that you take the action
of the insight followed. So I pray for that just
dumb to follow me. So I wake up, I say
my prayers, I fish around for my glasses. I get up,
and I let the dogs out to pee. And that
is how I connect with my higher power. And during
the day when I feel trubbled or stuck or up
(27:37):
tight or completely self absorbed or into the endless personality,
I do what you all have taught me to do.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
I pick up the ten pound phone.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
I stop, and I sit down, or do what I
call the sacramento plopage, and I pray the great prayer,
which is help. You know this, I am in a
hole that is too big for me to figure my
way out of. In view help. And you know what happens,
the phone ring, or the mail comes, or it tech drives,
(28:09):
or I remember to get outside, you know, And that
about ninety three percent of the time if I just
step out doors for five minutes and I look up.
It hits the reset button for me. You know, I'll
have a pastor who once said that you can trap
bees and mason jars with a drop of honey on
the bottom and no lid because they don't look up.
(28:32):
They just sort of walk around, bump on the floor
of the jar, bumping into the glass or to bitterly
because it don't look up. And so for me, that's
in my battered old toolbox. One of the main tools
is get outside, great outdoors, God, and look up or
look outside. Right now, it's pouring rain here in northern California,
(28:53):
and everywhere I look, the daffodils have come up, right,
And so I can also feel a lot of pity
for my predicament that it's early here, that you made
me get up really early. I can't use the heater
in my office because then you'll hear the hum, and
so I'm sort of cold and all that, and I'm looking.
I'm talking to you about my very, very literally favorite
(29:14):
subjects on earth with a sister in my life who
I hadn't met until now, And everywhere I look there's daffoodils.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, anyway, do we look at it as half empty
a half full, it's the half empty a half full.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah. Also yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say, Also,
you start hearing when you've been sober about twenty minutes
about the Native American story of the grandfather who tells
his grandson that every day when he wakes up, he
knows there's either there's a wolf that is like kind
of snarling or aggressive or frightening or and doing, and
(29:50):
then there's the wolf that's general and nurturing her cubs
and in the world. And which wolf do we feed?
You know? Then?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
So oh all right, yeah, thank you for sharing that.
You talked about your secret life, and I'm curious whether
any of the stories in your new book come from
that place of your secret life.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Oh God, I think you've read the book more recently
than I have, but because I don't read my work
once it's published. But that's at least three or four
stories about life, about lipping on the cosmic banana peel
and landing on my butt and fighting myself in the darkest,
(30:39):
shadowy realms of my being, which is the self loathing
and also the loathing from the outside world. A very
best friend who says to me, I don't want to
turn out like you. A horrible thing that I as
horrible mistake, an ugly mistake I made that went viral,
(31:00):
you know those sorts of things. And so, but my
secret life is stuff that I share with a kind
of widening pool of people, my husband and my best girlfriend,
and then I share it with a few people. Then
I share it with the people who help me stay
sober one day at time. I always share it immediately
with my son, who, grace of God, has thirteen years
(31:22):
clean of sober. Wow. I share it with a widening pool,
and pretty soon I'm telling it to people that I
don't even know that when they're going, oh my god,
thank you because I did something like that. I've been there,
Oh my God, I wanted to die. And then they
say to me, what did you do? And I tell
them the story, and I come to understand that all
(31:44):
of our secret stories are universal, and at some point
I feel confident to tell it to the public. So
there are about four stories about the ugly Gary, the
things that are revealed when you have no effective mental
defense against where life circumstances every so often takes you.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Can you give us a little overview on perhaps, you know,
pick one of those so that we can have an
idea of what one of those things is the youth.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Oh yeah, well, I think I alluded to it earlier
with the one story that I think was most devastating. Well,
there's two that was the most devastating. We're the one
where I have somebody I mentor spiritually an they're alcoholic,
And we were sitting on my couch and he had
come over as just a best family friend, someone who's
at all of our holiday meals, who was a really
(32:40):
central person in my child's life when he was little,
and he was talking about this woman who just trashes
him because a best friend, she doesn't trash him, but
she's constantly belittling him. He's bald, and he's chubby, and
he he doesn't make good choices with career and stuff
(33:01):
like that. And so tell them how I just said
one of those moments where I was not ground and
it seemed a good idea at the time to start
trashing this best friend of his, which he was kind
of doing. But you know, it's okay, Like if you
say horrible things about your brother when you're young, but
with somebody else does on the blacktop, and you beat
(33:22):
them up, right, And so I started saying these things
about his friend that I thought were obvious, and he
didn't quite respond then, And later that day he called
them and said, I don't want you to be my
mentor anymore, because I don't want to turn out like you.
And there was just like this awful silence, and we
hung up, and I understood what you do, well, you
(33:45):
understand when somebody said something awful for you, or publicly
when you get an awful review. And that was that
he alone could see who I actually am, and that
all the other people have been seduced by my persona
or my.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Needy place, yeah whatever.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
It was even the spar clear, the kind of tragic
you know, the little match girl neediness. And but he, alones,
guy Tim could see and express who I really am,
two faced and a backstep or just just a repellent.
He was my deepest fhere, that deep insight I'm disgusting.
And so the story is about then what?
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, then what then we'll do with that?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Where do you even start?
Speaker 1 (34:28):
And well you start, well, you make amends. You have
to make amends.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
You gotta no, no, no, no, no no, what you
do is you groveled. And she you know, there's that
thing that that there's three responses. There's fight or flight
or freeze right in the face of and I was
gonna say, or fawn, which I mentioned in somehow, and
what I my default is that I fawn, and I
(34:52):
immediately made amends by email. And then the person didn't respond.
And then I did what any person in the right
mind would do. I started to cry. Now my culture
and you sound English, are you? Yeah? I am, okay, yeah,
so my mother is. And so what you learn in
and I mean no offense to your people, But in
(35:13):
our house, you don't cry and you don't get angry,
and you do either of those things, and you get
sent to your room without eating, hence the tiny lifelong
eating disorder. But the women who have guided me now
for almost thirty eight years said cruelly, when you're sad, cry,
it will bathe you, it will hydrate you, it will
(35:34):
baptize you. And cry and get angry. And so though
I unlearned my childhood beginning of the day, I got
sober and I started to cry, and then I went
and I found my husband, and then I called my
best friend and my good idea with my best friend
was to call this man Tim and beg for forgiveness
(35:55):
and grubble and fun. And my best friend, who's been
sober as long as I have, said, maybe tomorrow, just
for today, maybe not, let's see. I think that would
be a detour away from what is being offered to you. Yeah,
as an opportunity for the deep die and the healing.
(36:17):
And so that's what I did, and I did what
was appropriate. It was which I felt terrible, but I
felt a little bit better. So and then the story
goes on. But can I tell the other story? Well, yeah,
of degradation. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's pretty somehow this book. Okay,
So ten years ago or so, there was a very
(36:38):
famous transgendered person who politically was one hundred and eighty
degrees away from where I am, which is to say,
a person who loved Trump and everything. And I had
it in for her. And I was with my really
long term Friday friend in fifty years and she tweeted
something just truly discussed about this woman, and I retweeted
(37:02):
it and it went viral. And my son has a
very close transgendered man friend, and my son just lost
his mind that I had done this, and I tugged
my heels in for a day. And then I got
the severity of the injury I had caused to an
(37:23):
entire community and to my child. And then I started
dancing as fast as I could. But I was revealed
to be no better than a raise sister, a sexist,
a biggoted everything I have spent my life fighting against,
and that all twenty books would testify to. But there
it was, and it was. It went big, It went big.
(37:48):
It made it into so many newspapers and podcasts, and
so that story is about, now, what what do you
do when you have screwed up at that level? Oh,
you do the same thing you try. You grovel and
fun and beg and you hate yourself.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
That's the main thing.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
You instantly hate yourself, and you believe that anything anyone
has ever.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Said is bad. It is true, and it's.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Finally been revealed, and luckily it's been revealed to half
a million people this time. And so the story is
and I don't want to ruin for it, but it's like, now,
what where do you even begin? Well, we're powerless over people,
places and things, but we can do this one crazy
thing that's in the toolbox, which is that we can
(38:37):
do the self love, we can take the action because
I'm happy English. You begin with a cup of tea,
of course, and you stroke your own shoulder and you say, Anny,
you're human and this is a nightmare and this too
show pass and love is going to heal this, and
you don't and figure it out as a bad slogan
(38:59):
and you don't need to know right now how love
will heal this, but I promise you it will.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Those are two fantastic stories and examples of of you
know how, just being human we can we can make
bad choices. It doesn't mean we're bad people. It means
we were We've made bad choices at times, which I
have to tell myself all the time. I'm not a
bad person. I made a bad choice. And yeah, wow,
(39:30):
do you feel like you got the you learned the
lesson from those things? Because I feel like if I
don't learn the lesson, the universe just knocks even louder.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Oh I know, I hate it. Oh so annoying. I
think it's a bad system. It is.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
I want to change it.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
If I were God's West Coast representative, which I think
I would be really good at because I have all
these excellent ideas for other people. But I would have
a magical cal and once you pretty much sort of
most of the time got it, you would be tapped
by God's magic wand and then you would be not
ever do that again. But the way it works is,
(40:11):
I really think God kind of gently clears his or
her throat and kind of their throat, let's say, and
nudges me. It's something weird and bad happens, and I
come through it. And except that I go back to
try to control people or manipulate people, or I diss
people or whatever that days, you know, the character defect
(40:32):
dejure is. And then God comes at me a little
bit harder. And then I think finally that they start.
God just starts drinking, you know, and it starts going,
oh my God, just and a lot is I'm on
my last nerve, God says, and then knocks me really hard.
And I thick with these two stories. I got knocked
(40:54):
really hard. And the only the message is, I mean,
I don't write messages. Ammuel Goldwyn, the producer, finally said
famously said in the forties, if you have a message,
send a telegram. But the story is about coming back
to friendliness with your screwed up needy you know, controlling
(41:18):
mistake made human merely being. As Ee Cominges put it,
you know, I love that bumper stick or I usually
don't push bumper stickers on people, but you've seen it.
I'm sure it says we're not human beings having spiritual experiences.
We're spiritual beings having human experiences. Yeah. And we're both
(41:38):
writers and we have these public lives. I'm sure you
have equivalent stories. Or you have said something that you
can't take back and it's gone out to one hundred
thousand people, and the story then is then what? And
the solution is always somehow about love?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, I mean, I'm show you're familiar with Kristin Neff's work,
uh huh about about self compassion, and it is one
of the hardest things that I, on a daily basis
have to do. Even this morning, I found myself getting
into a negative loop about my weight. Got a girl, yeah,
(42:23):
a PEX book, and then I was like, stop talking
to yourself like that. You know, it's been years since
I have done that, and it started this morning and
I was like, oh, there it is. There it is.
And practicing self compassion is you know that it's a
it's a daily it's a daily project.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
The self love. Yeah, the you know, there's back to
recovery for one second. There's this incredible tool that I
was gifted with and it's called the three a's. Do
you know this one? The three a's are awareness, awareness,
accept an, acceptance and action. Yeah. And so the awareness is, Oh,
(43:04):
I'm doing it again. I'm saying I should do, I
should have been, I should be? You should you get
you should yourself? You know you get should all over yourself?
You do the awareness? Oh my god, I'm telling myself
this really mean thing.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You wouldn't say to me when if we meet in
New York when I'm a booked. You know what, Annie,
I just wonder if you even go to the gym
at all. You know, you wouldn't say that to me.
You wouldn't say, I notice that you're eating like rice
and beans, which is really very high carb. And I
wonder you know what you would say with me is God,
I think you're perfect. I think you are amazing. I
(43:41):
love your body. I hope I look like you when
I'm saying okay, So the awareness is you're not there.
You've got the bad glasses on with yourself, right. The
awareness is almost always that you've got the bad pair
of glass on. Okay. The acceptance is that the culture,
every step of the way has told you certain things
about yourself. My mother was very heavy, so I had
(44:01):
and my dad hated women. My dad preferred long legged
women with big bus which is who he always had
affair switch. Of course, I accept that the culture, every
step of the way has told me I have to
look a certain way and be a certain way and
achieve at a certain level, or I have no protection
and everybody can see that I'm just this skinny, weird,
(44:24):
little or overweight old lady did it up? And so
I accept that.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Go well, don let's just pause for a second, because
the unfortunate reality is that the woman's physique that you
describe with long legs and big boobs is the sex
and desirability is the number one currency in the world.
I wish it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
No, it always was. I came up in that era.
I came up in the era where Playboy was just
getting off the ground. In nineteen sixty I was six
years old and the men started leaving the women in
our community, the younger women who didn't have the scars
of childhood or the or whatever. But I mean I
have marinated like a rump roast to that and the
(45:11):
broth of a fixation on what a women's body should
or should not look like. Okay, but back to acceptance.
So I accept this, and I put on pants that
fit instead of the pants that make me look thinn
or that are too tight. You know, the world has
got enough judgment on me without my pants getting in
on it. You know, I wear welcoming pants. So now
(45:32):
the third thing is the actioning pants, welcoming pants.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
And I'm then hiring my welcoming pants too, are you No,
I'm wearing my I'm not.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
I'm wearing pants that are a little tight that I'm
thinking of wearing on book tour because they make me
look thin.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
It's a long road back from that kind of body
judgment and self loathing. So I'm just trying to break
them in a little, just to be honest. Okay, And
then there's the acceptance. Well, what do you do. You
get a cup of tea? You start with that, You
touch your own shoulder. I talk to me the way
I talk to you who have never met in person,
and I always say, God, you are unbelievably gorgeous and fabulous,
(46:11):
and who epping cares what you look like, because what
you and I are bonding at is the level of
spirit and heart and miracle. And so let's just take
a minute and physically shake that off like wet dogs.
It got on us this morning. That shake it off,
and you do the loving action. And then again it
(46:31):
goes back to you want to have loving feelings about yourself,
do loving things. You want to have loving feelings in
the world.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Take a bag of.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
Food over to the food pantry in the more deprived
parts of the county. You know, call your strangest aunt
and stay on the phone with her because she's so lowly,
and stay on the phone, which she goes into full weirdness,
you know, and maga, and just stay on the phone
and then get off, tell her you love her, and
go for a walk. And so it's a awareness acceptance action.
(47:01):
And so you and I this side of the grave
are going to have really bad thoughts about ourselves. It
just comes with the territory. It just comes from being human.
It comes with having a particular kind of alcoholic mental illness,
that where the healing is taking a flighty bit longer
than it. Oh, and that is the work that we're
(47:23):
here for. Earth is forgiveness school, you know. And when
you have forgiven them people who have hurt you most,
then there's old darling mixed stuff. Yeah, there's you, there's stiff,
there's yeah. And and some days go better than others.
And as I said, some days they're just too long.
And we do the best.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
We can on any given day.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
And but the main thing that guides me is that
when I catch myself in the awareness that I'm shaming
myself about my body or about you know, something that
I did this like after I get off the talking
with you, what I meant to say, or what I
should have said to probably win over more readers, whatever.
Then what we do is talk to ourselves the way
(48:08):
that we would talk to each other, the way I
would talk to a friend, even a casual friend. We
I would talk to them gently, I would talk to
them in a certain way, not the way I talk
to myself. And so I change channels from the bad
radio station to the sweeter one, the gentler one, the
more compassionate one. The more everybody's in the same boat.
(48:28):
You know that everybody scared a lot. Everybody has a
lot of terrible, terrible self esteem. Everybody has a raging ego.
Everybody has lost somebody that they can't live without, you know.
And so we approach each other as as if it's
the er. You know. We sit down except people in
the er, and we say, do you want me to
(48:48):
get you a glass of water? You know, and you
need to talk and I can listen. I got a minute.
We talk to people that way instead of the way
that our parents talk to us or the culture talk
to us.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yes, yeah, it's a lot. You're absolutely right, it's a
lot of reprogramming a day at a time. And by
the way, and I think that you put so much
of yourselves into your work, and I think you know,
certainly through this conversation. What I find that people connect
the most with with the interviews that I do, are
(49:23):
when people really do share their truest selves. Because you
will have done hundreds of interviews about this book on
this press talk, and you'll be saying the same old
stuff that people can hear on twenty thirty different podcasts.
What I like doing is sharing with people a different
(49:43):
experience of somebody, and that's what I think we've done
here today. And I'm really grateful I got to speak
to you at the beginning and not at the end
where you're like, oh my god, I've told all my
stories and I'm so over this. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah, I can't believe you've had be on your show.
It's really an honor. This is Yeah, this is the
stuff I would love to talk about all day, every
day and get to on good days. And so thank
you for helping me start out my morning with you.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
Thank you for saying yes, and thank you for a
really wonderful conversation. And I am very excited for the
people who you know, love my show to hear your
life experience and for people to read your book. Thank
you so much. Thank you so much for listening to
(50:35):
that fantastic episode. Please like subscribe and all that business.
It does really help the podcast, and most importantly, come
join me on substack. Substack is where I'm showing the
video of the entire episode that you just listen to.
So find me on substack if you want to dig
in a bit deeper to the subjects that we talked
(50:56):
about in this episode. See you there,
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