Maria Bello: Acting, Advocacy, and Acceptance

Seano sits down with the incredibly talented Maria Bello, an actress, writer, producer, and social activist. Maria opens up about her illustrious career in Hollywood, her deep commitment to humanitarian causes, and the personal struggles that shaped her journey. From growing up in a challenging environment to becoming a beacon of hope and inspiration, Maria's story is one of resilience, love, and transformation.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everybody, Welcome to the Sino Show. My guest today is
Maria Bellow. She's an actress, writer, producer, social activist. One
of my all time favorite movies, The History of Violence,
The Cooler Dr Ncis. She is an absolute badass. She's
a kind soul. I married her in Cabo Round, an

(00:20):
extraordinary show.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I couldn't live unless I was acting, and I had
an outlet for that, and this job. As amazing as
that show was, as amazing as all the people were,
I couldn't bear to be there. I could do a
whole book show about self help books, these programs everywhere
in the world, body workers, headworkers. I just did the
whole funk. Okay, finally I gave it all up because

(00:45):
I realized there's nothing to fix.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
You made a bet on yourself, and that's what we do.
And you believe in yourself and love you make a
bet on yourself even though it's fucking scary. My guest
today from Maria Vallo. She's an actress, writer, producer, activist
for social issues. She is in one of my all

(01:10):
time favorite movies, The History of Violence with Our Brother Vigo,
which is a masterpiece. By the way, The Cooler r
and cis. You were in a little TV show recently
called Beef is a Beef, little little show that you
got nominated for an Emmy. Yeah, congratulations. You also came
up with a storywark producer on The Woman King. Yeah,

(01:31):
and you're also one of the kindest people I've ever met.
And uh, I was blessed to be the efficient at
your wedding with Don a couple of months ago, So
thank you for that. And here we are on a
Sunday at one nine two five shall Avenue.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
And I can't believe you're making me cry off the
bat the gate.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. So listen, I was just riffing,
you know how I love to riff. And I wrote
down things I want to talk about, Okay. I wrote
down Paris, I wrote down menopause. I wrote down marriage,
social justice, getting in the dirt, disaster relief, Woman King,
creative rebirth, car Young's seven rules for life, a modern family,

(02:15):
What does it mean to let go acceptance of my extremes.
We can talk about all that or none of that,
but you know I love story.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yep. And so we got to go back a little
bit to Philly.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Good let's go because.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
I always loved to know what was that moment, like
you saw Jaws and you wanted to be an actor?

Speaker 3 (02:33):
What it was? Were you a happy kid? Were you
a nerdy kid? Were you the kid? And all the plays?

Speaker 2 (02:38):
My mother tells people all the time, I was a bookworm.
I was very shy in my way and introvert and
trying to escape the chaos that was going around. That
was going on around me. I would just live in books, stories.
It was words, it was stories. And then I started

(02:59):
playing dress up to go with those stories, to sort
of disappear into another place that wasn't my reality of
when I was living. So when I look back on
it now, it makes sense that I became an actor
and a storyteller and a writer.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
What's the cash?

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Well the zo?

Speaker 2 (03:20):
You know, it's so interesting. You and I talk about
this a lot. There are people who have come from
horrible circumstances and people who come from great circumstances. When
I was growing up, even into my adulthood, I thought
everyone grew up like me. It just wasn't true. And
then I started meeting people who had like really kind fathers,

(03:41):
never been yelled at in my life. It was a suburb,
a blue collar suburb of Philadelphia. My father was a
construction worker. My mother was a nurse, but a full
time mom. They had four kids by the time they
were like twenty six years old, I mean imagine. And
then my father, at thirty three years old and not
very educated, he left high school, went into the army.

(04:05):
He a steel bean was dropped on his back on
a construction site and his back was broken, and that
spiraled into addictions for him, into alcohol, into drugs, into
you know, mental illness, and my mother had to go
back to work. Thank god she had a nursing degree,
because most women didn't work back then, so she had

(04:28):
to go to work, and we were left to be
raised by my dad, who was not in a good place.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
And what spit the rest of his life in wheelchair?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, well disabled definitely with his back. Now he's in
a chair. He's in a home right now. And it's funny,
you know, I have a lot of compassion for my dad,
for sure. And I've been in therapy since I was
like twenty. I told her I went to like ST
when I was twenty lifespring ST. I was way into
it and so under good I think just because of

(05:01):
the soul that I was born at understood that he
was actually a good man, even though he was abusive verbally, physically,
particularly to my brother, even to our animals, like it
was that witnessing that. But weirdly I always knew and
we all knew that he was a good man underneath
it all. He was just wounded. And so I had

(05:25):
this major forgiveness even in those years twenties, thirties, forties,
And it wasn't until you and I started working together
again that another layer came up. And the other layer was, yes,
I can forgive him, accept him. And at the same time,

(05:47):
except that I never had someone read me a book,
you know, sit on someone's lap, someone that holds your
hand and says like you're the sweetest girl, whatever, All
of those little things that I woke up to, particularly
getting married now and realizing that was never modeled for me.
There was never I never had that figure in my

(06:08):
life that I could trust. Maybe that's why I didn't
get married until until now. I think that was part
of it. You and I've spoken about it a lot,
You know that real Trust's what we were just saying
about my marriage. The conversation I had right, like trusting
someone that I can ask for help. Who was like
with my father, I felt like I would walk to

(06:30):
his chair and he'd say, you're safe, and then I
would get smacked. So it was like that love you
hate you, you know, smack you kiss you like. It
was very, very confusing to me.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
And now I know you love him. I love the
relationships on your terms.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
It's totally on my term. So you taught me a
lot about that, about boundaries. My father will never understand
what I'm saying. I can try to have these deeper
conversations with him, but that's not where he's at, you know,
and he's losing his mind. Now he has a little
bit of dimension. He's in a home and all the
women are crazy about him. He goes around and his
a little scooter and flirts with everyone and waters the

(07:09):
gardens and plays Rummy Cube and Bingo and he's really
enjoying his life. And my mother is so crazy about him.
They're still so crazy in love. It's unbelievable after so
many years. They're addicted to each other. They've always been
addicted to each other.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Wow, do you get your kindness from your mom?

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah? Yeah, I can get my kindness from my mom
for sure. We're off from my dad too.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, we have a really really kind family, like really
steeped in values of compassion, of God, of you know, everybody.
Everybody's a decent person. So we always came into our
life thinking people were decent until they prove different. But
I definitely still do that. I probably have done it

(07:58):
too much so that I've been hoodwinked quite a few
times because I just except people. I'm like, oh my god,
they seem so open, so great, so loving, so kind,
and then they fuck you right right right. We find
out later it's not it wasn't true.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, and we've done a lot of work around looking
at the flags for decepters of the world.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Exactly for sure. About do you know you taught me
a lot about discernment what that means. It's not like
I'm being hard or I'm being gardened guarded. It's called discernment.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
So when did you get the real bug for acting
and saying I got to get the fuck out of
here and get my ass to New York.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well, I was studying law, international women's rights, in peace
and Justice education. I was going to go to I
went to the Illinov University and I was going to
go to law school. That was my plan. I wanted
to change the world. I was always a social justice
advocate from when I was younger, and I had a
on this guy. It was at the end of my

(09:01):
junior year and someone said you could take an acting
class as an elective, and he was taking the class.
I was like, cool, But I never thought I could
be an actor. I thought you had to be born
in Hollywood, you had to sing and dance. I did
none of those things. But I took the class and
I was really good at it. I was so good
at in fact, that the teacher called my mother to

(09:23):
say that I was really good at this, and she'd
never sort of seen this before. And I knew I
was doing this monologue and I was a Bob Dylan
song I'll Never Forget It, and it was about I
dressed like a homeless person, an unhoused person, and gave
this monologue. And I realized that I could be more

(09:48):
helpful in a social justice way, probably being an actor
and doing what I did best. But I was also
so ashamed. There we go shame again, which you and
I have dealt with a lot well talk about later
about My best friend was a Catholic priest who my
son's named after. Actually his name is father Ray Jackson.
My son's name's Jackson. So he was my best friend.

(10:09):
He was my only friend in college, really really incredible guy.
So I went to him and I said, Father, I
don't know what to do. I thought I was supposed
to help the world in some way and I was
going to go into politics, and now you know, I
want to be an actor. I don't know what to do.
And he said, Maria, you serve best by doing the
thing you love most.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
And I went, oh, okay, say that line one more time.
It's so good.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
You serve best by doing the thing you love most,
right right right on. So I packed up two trash
bags filled with clothes and three hundred dollars and went
to New York City.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
And were you nervous? Was your family like no?

Speaker 1 (10:47):
No?

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Were they like no, no, you got us go to
law school?

Speaker 2 (10:50):
And I want to say that about my father too.
He wasn't all bad and wounded when I was growing up.
He was funny as well, like funny of like, get ahead,
do whatever you want. They were always cool about that
as old fashioned. He comes from an immigrant Italian family.
My mother's a Polish immigrant family. As traditional as they are,
they're also very open minded. They've always supported us, supported

(11:12):
us in whatever we wanted to do. But granted, I
was paying for myself since I was like sixteen years old,
you know, through college, and started my first job when
I was eleven years old, constant constant worker. So I
had to bring myself to New York. Live on somebody's floor. Okay.

(11:33):
So there was like this village voice, and I would
found apartments. So I lived on this girl's floor, and
my dad and my brother came up and they built
me a screen. It was purple satin on wood so
they could separate me from the room. And I had
a little single mattress on the floor and these little
milk crates for my books. And that's how I lived.

(11:55):
You're going to love this. This is so me, by
the way, this story. You're going to get this. So
I'm working as a restaurant, I'm working as a waitress.
I'm making my way. I'm like the girl with the
army boots, you know what I mean. Like I was
a tough Philly girl, and I bought flowers for myself,
no matter what, no matter how before I was, I
would go to the deli. They were three dollars at

(12:16):
the time for like a dozen. I had these yellow tulips.
I went that day like down to my last money,
no money, and I'm walking and I hear this guy say, yo,
those flowers for me, and I laughed. I turn around
and say the guy and I go, yeah, why not
here He was like I was kidding. I'm like, no,
I have the flowers. It's okay. And he turned to me,

(12:39):
He's like, who are you? We start talking. He was
this famous actor called Pauli Herrman. Okay, he's passed away since,
but we got to talking. He's like, should I induce
shoot on my friend. He's a manager and also the
best acting teacher in New York City, Fred Kerreman. Go
see him. You need to go see him. I'm going

(13:00):
to give you his name right now. And do you
know what that became my first manager. That acting teacher
changed my life.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
I was in class with him from the next week
for the next three years. Learned everything I know about
acting from this man. But it was because I was
willing to give away the flowers.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Really, that's right, and that continues to be a theme
in your life. It does, it, really does it does?

Speaker 3 (13:26):
I have you know, you've never told me that that
is really beautiful.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
It started quite young when I started having this, uh,
these connections that started happening. But it's about keeping your
eyes open in being generous, not for the connection to happen,
but just h.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
You were I've given the flowers and that was it.
You would have moved on with your day.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Kindness respects kindness.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
I think that's right.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
I think it's right.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
I love that kindness respect.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Kindness respects kindness. He saw he felt the vibration of
the frequency of your generosity. Yeah, he's such a sharp guy.
You probably realized you are starving artists and.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Saw that that's beautiful. Wow. So that so what was
your first big break?

Speaker 2 (14:09):
My first big break was a Pizza Hut commercial. My
mom still has a video of it somewhere because they
were like looking looking and I'm under a hat and
I walked by like this, there's a video of it,
and you have to go like, oh, there she is there.
She's no, No, that's not her. No, But my big

(14:30):
break happened. So years after that, I was I was good.
I got I got good. I worked really really hard
to become a really good actor, and it took a
lot of concentration and a lot of effort. And then
I was dating some guy who lived in LA and

(14:50):
everyone told me I would hate La. I was such
a New Yorker. But I went to visit him in LA.
He came to pick me up. He was an actor.
He was going to an audition at Universal Studios or
Warrior Brother Studios. I went with him and he's in
the casting office and he came out and he goes, hey,
the casting director, she's from Philly. She wants to meet you. Kathleen.

(15:14):
Kathleen literary. I hope she's still alive, and hears this, Yeah,
she really changed my life. Thank you if you're out there.
And I met her and she said, would you read
something for me? And I said sure, And I did
a reading because I'd been in class doing this for
three years now. I'd never seen it before, but I
was reading with her across the table this part. It

(15:34):
was a remake of the show called seventy seven. Sunset
Strip was an old show from the seventies, so sure,
and I got the job, so literally my first foot
in Los Angeles. I got a job that day, the pilot.
And what I realized is I was a cute girl,
but I also knew how to act, right, And what

(15:55):
happens a lot in Los Angeles apparently, well no I
know it now, but kids come here, but they don't
have a there's no base.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
No skill set, no skill set the world.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Right, And so I was fortunate enough that I had
the skill set at that point. But there were ups
and downs after that. Listen, I wasn't working consistently, you know.
I was still trying to learn about Hollywood and agents
and and then I did, uh this show called Mister
and Missus Smith, which was I was a big success
in and then er Er was gigantic. And then when

(16:28):
I left R, I left R, which was so crazy
back in the day, everyone thought I was crazy. I
was supposed to be on that show for seven year
contract or whatever, and it was a year and a
half into it and I was so in pain. I
was I was bored. It wasn't what I expected it

(16:49):
to be. I expected it to be this community of
actors like where I had come from like in the
theater that and a lot of joy and expression, and
but there was so many people to service and so
many stories, and I didn't really get to act, and
I needed to act for my crazy. My crazy could

(17:12):
not live. I mean, I couldn't live unless I was acting,
and I had an outlet for that. And this job,
as amazing as that show was, as amazing as all
the people were, I couldn't bear to be there. And
so I went to my producer, really kind man, another

(17:33):
really kind man, John Wells, and said, I'd rather sweep
streets at this time, at this time in my life,
like I'm going crazy, And I got to go, and
he was so supportive and so cool. Now I look back,
I'm like, what were you crazy for leaving art? But
I also know that I wouldn't have been alive. You know,
I was so deep in my depression anxiety. It was

(17:56):
before it was really diagnosed, before i'd ever been on medication.
I would, you know, I would trip up, and you know,
for months at a time, I was like underwater. It
could barely leave my house, but I didn't know exactly
what it was. And it was after I left that
show I spiraled like so far down that I had

(18:17):
like a psychotic break. I got in my car and
I started driving through a thunderstorm from Los Angeles, and
twenty hours later I found myself in in like a
holiday in Needles, Colorado, like wanting to kill myself, like
no idea. Thank God. I had a great brother who
lives here, you know, Chris.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
And we used like a manic episode.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
It was a mixed episode. It was manic and depressed.
It was you know, suicidal, but I didn't know how
to talk about it at that point. So they got
me back home and my mother, my sweet mother, came
out to be with me, and a psychiatric nurse came
to the house and I was there for about three months.
The sweetest thing my mother would hold my feet at
night because I couldn't stop moving my feet. It was

(19:04):
I felt like I couldn't there was no ground to
stand on, and they sent me. I went to a
psychiatrist for the first time, and he said I was
so nervous about medication. There was a lot of shame
around that as well. Remember I want to say I
was like twenty seven years old, so thirty years ago.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, people were not talking about this stuff.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Nosh, no, it was a very awareness no.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
But this great psychiatrist that I found as soon as
I got back, he said, Maria, if you're near sighted,
you need glasses to see. It's that simple. So those
I remember those first three months, going on and off
of different medications, trying to find the sweet spot for me,

(19:49):
and some things didn't make me feel good, and I
felt lethargic. And then I finally found a protocol that worked,
and I couldn't believe how much better I felt. I
couldn't believe how much more like me I felt, as
opposed to the idea that I had heard about that
medication dampens you. Somehow, somehow it made me more of
who I am, and I could actually function in the world.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
What advice would you have for people struggling with these
type of issues now?

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Ask for help, ask for hell so hard, ask for help.
That's what I did with you, right, being in a
bad time and a hard place in my life, asking
you for help, asking people we love, like I just
asked my wife for help, which was even though she's
my wife, was gigantic for me. And you know, if

(20:40):
you don't have someone personally who can help you, there's
plenty of people like Google, people who can help you
to get through, get through what you're going through, because
we've all gone through stuff and there's always people there
to support us.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Always beautiful. So right on, let's stay on that.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
You know the thing about r I love about you. Yeah,
you've never played it safe. No, And I love your
gumption and I love like you kind of like kind
of do your own thing and and you know, leave
millions on the table sometimes for it.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah, where did that come from?

Speaker 2 (21:17):
No, I've always been odd.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Is that odd?

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Or just my son calls it eccentric? Now, yeah, I
think because I'm an artist, I think the idea that
you know, from our growing up, our childhood, we all
have all this garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, what are you
going to do with it? For me, it was like

(21:41):
taking it out and making a beautiful sculpture, and that
way it would be outside of me and I could
see it and it would become beautiful. So I've thought
about my whole kind of creative process like that, like
continuing to put it out there and make all that
something something beautiful. So sometimes it's not even a choice.

(22:04):
Sometimes my body or something goes remember, I just let
this big job go something and he goes like I can't.
And sometimes I'm even down to my last dollar. Sometimes
I'm like, I can't do that. That will not be
good for my soul or my mental health. The times
when I haven't done that, i haven't listened to myself,

(22:24):
and I've taken some job because it's money and it's
a studio film or whatever. Never went well. It wasn't
the part for me. It didn't go well. So now,
when you didn't trust your intuition, that's right. I didn't.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Intuition is always right from the game, that's right. Always?

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Do you think? Always?

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah? I do.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Can it be fear sometimes though?

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Because I struggle with that. Right is my intuition always? Writers?
Is it fear? Sometimes?

Speaker 1 (22:52):
I think the best gift traumasaurs get when they do
the work and they make peace with their spirit, they
get the get to intuition it back again.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
I really wholeheartedly believe that. I believe when I get
that yucky, it's God talking to me. And pay attention
to it, right, and it's always served me well.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
So you have a very clear red light green light yep.
Because you've worked at it for years, like honing that
probably yep, yeah, yeah, I'm getting better at it.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
I know you are getting a lot better. Let's go
onto this because you said.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
It certainly, acceptance of my extremes and the navigation of that.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
Yeah about that.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
For so long, So I told you about that episode.
It was my first sort of psychotic break, realizing that,
you know, my brain was different and I need medication.
And I was diagnosed with different things throughout the years.
Some people called it bipolars, some people said episodes of
depression and anxiety. Right, there was all of these different diagnoses,
and I was always trying to fix myself. I was

(23:57):
in therapy for you know, thirty years, different therapists. I
read every self help book you could ever ever ever imagine.
I could do a whole book show about self help books,
spiritual teachers, you know, these programs everywhere in the world,
body workers, headworkers like I just did the whole fun ooking,

(24:18):
and finally, finally I gave it all up because I
realized that there's nothing to fix. And that's why I
came to you, right, because you're a guy who knows
there's nothing to fix.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
You're good. You're good exactly how you are. So when
I say the acceptance of my extremes, it's like, yes
do I am? I way here and way here? Yep.
Even with medication, I still I still could do that thing.
But now I'm wearing acceptance of it. It's not gonna
go away, That's what it is. But how do I
make that magical? How do I make it art? How
do I I know when I travel different time zones,

(24:57):
I tend towards mania. So you know what I do now,
I start organizing the house as soon as I get
home smart. I try to use that sort of energy
into something.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
You got acceptance about it, and that's when the real
magic happens. Yeah, there are certain things you have to
do when you get off the plane in Parish.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
You got to fix your place. Just wait at whatever
that version is, right.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, exactly morning routine like you always talked about.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
You know, I'm about the routine. Yeah right, And here's
what I mean. You know, I love you for a
lot of things. You know, time progresses, you get more success. Yeah,
you realize you're quite good at this. You're awarded publicly
and you know financially for your gift that you work
so hard for, but you've always balanced it with humanitarian efforts.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, yeah, do you know. I don't know if you
even knew this, but I started a program with two
friends in New York City when I was a waitress,
like I had nothing, called the dream Yard Project, which
is now a gigantic school in New York City in
the Bronx.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
What, yes, I don't I don't know.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
It was an acting class with these two guys. They
were so wonderful. They were volunteering at this school for
boys and girls in Harlem, and it was a play
program and after school play program. So we just started
to create our own program. So three times a week
we would go up. There were kids from five to
twelve years old and you know, running around hiding in

(26:21):
trash cans. The first day we got there and we said,
tell us the stories about your lives, your hopes, and
your dreams, and we started helping them to express their stories.
You know, where's the place you always wanted to go?
I always wanted to live underwater? Okay, so what would
we do there? And so fell in love with these
kids and the work they were doing, and saw how

(26:44):
how much these kids were growing. We did a play
with them. We rented out a theater so the kids
put on a show. Then Spike Lee was casting a
movie called Crooklyn. Oh my God, and we took all
of our kids, twelve kids to audition because they were
looking for kids for this movie for Crooklyn. And one
of the kids got the part.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Her name was Tanil Royale. Tanil, if you ever hear
this or anyone knows her, please find me. I've been
trying to find you for years. She was a foster kid.
Her and sisters lived with this family in an apartment
in Harlem. So I was her caretaker. I was her
caretaker on set of this movie. She got the part.

(27:28):
So before I started working in movies, I met Spike
Lee and was a teacher on the set of a
movie watching this young kid get her brain beautiful.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
So I loved my work doing that in New York City.
But then I heard this kid, Carlos was his name.
He was around twelve too, I think eleven twelve. He
gave this speech because we were having a fundraiser. By
a fundraiser, I mean, we cut up some cheese and crackers.
I'd like twenty kids like paying five bucks to come.
My parents would come up and help. That was another thing.

(28:00):
They were always generous too about you know humanitarians. Y Yeah, yeah,
exactly love that. Carlos said, you know, they gave me
confidence to follow my dreams. And I thought, oh yeah,
but I'm not doing that. I was actually putting so
much energy and effort into helping other people, which I

(28:22):
tended to do in my life and I still do.
I can get wrapped up in that, so much energy
helping other people to succeed that I wasn't doing. I
wasn't paying attention to myself. I wasn't getting the energy
enough to myself to succeed. And I wanted to be
a successful actor. That's what I wanted to be. And

(28:42):
so I remember that moment and waking up inside and going,
I gotta go, like, I need to focus, and I did,
and and soon later I was in La.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Wow. Yeah wow.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
So I've sort of done these programs my whole life,
and then I started working when I came to La
with Save the Children. There was a hurricane in Nicaragua
one year. My brother who lives here, we were here
for Thanksgiving. We had nothing to do. I saw it
on TV it said Save the Children, give to this

(29:17):
Nicaragua fund. There was a horrible hurricane and so I
called the person from Save the Children in La and
I was like, hey, what's up. I'm an actor and
they knew who I was. I think I was on
er or something at the time, and can we help?
And he was like yeah. So I got this group
of friends together. Within a week. We collected all sorts

(29:40):
of things to play with, soccer balls, crayons, coloring books,
like glitter art supplies, and we went to Nicaragua. Seven
of us was Saved the Children and we moved to
different camps and we did play programs. What we realized
is that being entertainers, being storytellers, if you have this

(30:03):
much devastation in your community, the thing that lifts you
up is the laughter of your children. If you see
like your kids are starting to have joy again. In
play we would see people just crying just watching their
kids playing again, and we would play games with them,
music and dancing, and so that sort of started off
my foray into disaster relief, which would become much of

(30:27):
my life doing disaster relief.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
After that, was that an accident that the storytelling that
you knew was a great healer, or did you.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
I had no idea. You had no idea that say,
it's not like I planned it or I thought it out.
I never thought much out, by the way, and I
still don't, which is a problem for me sometimes I
just sort of like go with the flow. And I
just went with the flow, and we just thought we'll
go there to give help out things. And then it

(30:55):
became this cut. Two years later, Save the Children started
a play program in camps because they found that it
was really They started safe spaces, play programs and camps.
And then I went with them to quite a few places,
to Nepal, to Bhuton, to Thailand, to a few other places.
Was Saved the Children.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
How'd you end up in Haiti working there?

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Well, I'd been to Haiti two thousand and eight. A
friend in Hollywood invited us to go, and I fell
in love with this country. There was a Catholic priest
who became a doctor who worked there and has a
children's hospital, father Rick Fraschett. And we went and we

(31:39):
worked at the hospital and lived on the grounds of
the hospital and had an extraordinary experience. It was like
working in the hospital during the day and partying all
night and fun and hot and sexy, and to be
living in the kind of like that the rhythm of

(32:00):
the earth. I can't explain Haiti except it's the sexiest
place ship I've ever been to. A lot of pain.
There's also a lot of poverty and a lot of pain,
but there's so many incredible people there doing so much
healing for people and with people and within their communities.
So there's a real uh, there's a real power there,

(32:21):
even to the poorest of the poor. There's a real
power and a real resilience that I was really drawn to.
So a few a couple of years later, in twenty ten,
so I got to be friends with this priest, another priest.
I have a thing for priests. And the earthquake happened
in Haiti. Two hundred and thirty five thousand people died

(32:41):
in this earthquake. Wow, I mean it was a bigger
It wasn't a little earthquake. People don't understand that. They
don't remember that. So I was in my therapist's office
true story, with my boyfriend. We were breaking up. He
was out in the hallway and I was saying to therapists, okay,
I've been here enough. We got to do it today.

(33:02):
I mean he and are over each other, and he
knew it too. I mean the next thing you know,
he comes bursting in. He's like, oh my god. There
was an earthquake in Haiti. So we called our friend
right away, father Rick, and say what should we do.
He was at his dying father's bedside in Connecticut, and
he said, if the spirit moves you come and help
me dig my people out.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
So five days later I found myself on a plane
with a weird, interesting group of people, from movie stars
to socialized to plastic surgeons, to tugboat captains to the
strangest a senator. There was a senator with us who
was like in a me too moment, a senator who
came to get some press, like strange people. And we

(33:45):
landed there in the midst of it was rubble. At
this point, it was only five days after the earthquake,
so they were still digging people out from under rubble.
And we landed there, and the next thing you know,
we found this camp that had popped up fifty thousand
people and it was this old golf club, old country club.

(34:09):
Funny enough, so I have really good friends in Haiti.
Now you met Lolo, so she became my best friend. Yes,
she's my person. Fourteen years ago whatever she and I met.
This is the country club where they used to play
golf and she learned how to swim and ride horses,
and that Haiti has that as well. People don't understand it.
They just think it's this poor nation. But there's like
an entire culture there, generations of people who grew up

(34:33):
and who play golf the country club, but now fifty
thousand person camp and the station was at the top
of the camp. And I started a women's clinic there.
So that was the first sort of and I loved it,
and I wasn't afraid. I think I had worked so
long and to have such tough skin that I actually

(34:54):
do have really tough skin. It's getting thinner as I
get older, sometimes feeling things I might not have felt before.
And maybe that's not a bad thing, but it works
for disaster relief. And again, the disaster relief as painful
as a baby dying in your arm. But that night,
like you've fallen in with love with someone you've just

(35:16):
met for two days and you're, you know, dancing in
the middle of this crazy crowd like that you have
both of those things. That's why the TV show that
I've sold for thirteen years that I'm back again doing
is the disaster relief Show.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Right. I hope that happens me too, because there's so
much rich.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, get down, there's so much rich material there because
people come from all over the world. It's this common
sense of good, of kind of wanting to save people.
But we go there to the war zone, disaster zones
all over the world. We go there to give relief,
but we go there to get relief from our own pain,

(35:59):
from our own hit, from our own boredom, from our
own addictions, whatever they are. So somehow it heals you.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
My great teacher was a beautiful Irish man named Jim Dunnigan.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, what was Jim like?

Speaker 1 (36:16):
He was all light, He was all light and he
found a few things out in life and he really
taught me the art of the world doesn't need to change.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
I do.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
And he was the one who sorted really hit me
on that path. But he so besides being a therapist,
he worked for United Airlines. He was their head therapist
and when the planes would crash, Jim would be first
on the site, and so he taught me a lot
about trauma. But he also said, hey, Sino, we became
very very close. He actually married me.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
He says, disasters attract the greatest people in the role
and the craziest people in the world at the same time.
It's a very fascinating thing, right, And you described it.
You saw both. You saw people that wanted to get
their picture of the paper and you saw people that
actually wanted to.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Care and serve.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Let me ask you this, wee people will be where
is he? He's no longer with us. He's with us
right now.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
But and he went out the way I did. I
hope to go out. He went swimming and that was it.
He had a heart attack and called it a day.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
That's a good way to go.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
I want to go out that way. I want to
get in the ocean and just both.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Well.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Hopefully that won't be soon because a lot of us
would be struggling with you. Really, you came at a
perfect time in my life, You really did, because I
wasn't particularly looking for a therapist at that time. I
was over it for a while, you know, I mean,
it's not like I went from one therapist to the next.
And then one of our mutual friends who was seeing you,
He's like, he's come to my therapist with me. I
was like what what he was like, Yeah, he's really

(37:46):
cool to just come in, And I immediately felt safe
with you. But one of the big reasons I felt
safe with you is because of that, because it was
so open, it was so authentic. You wouldn't say anything
to me that you wouldn't say to dom, right, Like, yes,
there is an openness and a curiosity. Yes, and you

(38:07):
attract curious souls. Yes, So it seems like everybody who
comes to you you have to be curious to come
to you. This is true, which is you know my mother,
we've had I think we had a session with my couple,
you know, Jeanine or whoever. Yeah, but and I talk
to them like I talk to you, right, So you
get to see the honesty. There's like a circle of trust.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
There's no identified the patient. We're all kind of working
it out as a team.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
That's what you're all here as a team.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, you work it out as a team. You never
identified me as a patient?

Speaker 3 (38:38):
No, okay, I never see that way.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
I think that you're the first therapist who didn't identify
me as a patient. That's what I was saying about
learning to say I'm good, and that's what you model.
I'm good. But then because we start out there, that's
the baseline, then you can learn stuff. But if you're

(39:01):
stuck in your wounds, like you're wounded, wounded, wound and
you're not good, you're not good. If you're just stuck
in that place. I have to fix myself. I have
to fix myself. I'm not good enough. There's you're so
stuck in it, there's nowhere to grow. So suddenly I
feel like when I've gotten to the acceptance of myself again,
of the extremes, the acceptance of the extremes. Now I'm

(39:22):
learning so much, so much. I've learned so much with
you the last few years.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
That's Yeah, Like a lot of New Yorkers comeing that
have been addicted to Park Avenue.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
Analysts, analysts.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
They're so right and they're so used to that, but
somehow they end up here and they're so stuck because
they love the story of when dad or mom wasn't there,
And so one of my techniques is after a while,
I just go on, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Oh shit,
sorry what did you say?

Speaker 3 (39:56):
And they're like, what the fuck are you doing? I
can't hear this same Moore because it's so boring. Do
you want to do something different in your life? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Right?

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Are you ready to change?

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Because I'm tired of We're not gonna do the story anymore, right,
You're so much bigger than the story. Yeah, anyway, I
want to go back to one thing and then I'll
move on. Not everybody can get on a plane and
go to Haiti, that's it, no particularly, So what can
people do to give back? They can't get on a plane.
What can people give back?

Speaker 3 (40:20):
How do they do that?

Speaker 2 (40:21):
You know, I've thought about this a lot over the years,
which is you serve best by doing the thing you
love most. If you love soccer, bring some soccer balls
and go play soccer with kids in the park at
a homeless place for kids after school, right on, right,
There's always things that you can do with things that
you love. There is a way to be of service

(40:44):
just doing what you love. I love to travel, I
love disaster relief. So it's something that I've always really
been drawn to I le adventure, excitement, you know, drama,
So why not use that to.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Uplift Okay, I'm gonna I haven't think I've done this,
Maybe I have yet. I want to issue a challenged listeners,
ok because I know a lot of people have ideas
about the soccer ball and the first thing that brain's
gonna say, oh it's not is that no one's going
to do that. I'm going to challenge people just to
do it. Then tell me if it doesn't work. But
you got to get out there and fucking do something.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yes, I agree. Make a list of five things that
you have fun doing right right?

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Boom five?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Okay, go go, and then you figure out use just Google,
do the whole thing, use AI or shock bop whatever
you want to lose, and say, how can I be
of service using these five things?

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Boom right? And you got to give it a shot.
The things I want to I want to like reading.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Go to your local library and read to kids once
a week. Like something something something right, do some thing?

Speaker 3 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, I I you know I you know me.
I'm big on service because to me, you can't hang around.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Shell if you're not getting back for sure, And to
your point. I had a guy who was a pretty
good piano player. I don't know what to do. Here's
what you're gonna do. Go to old folks. I'm asking
if they can plan Sunday.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
It's simple, simple, change life.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Somebody gets to hear Coultrand for the first time, and.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Then people understand that it's not just for the other people,
it's for you.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
Right.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
It feels so good to give, Yes, it does feel
so good, and then you can overgive.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
Right, right, And let me just stay on this great theme,
miss Vella.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Right.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
I love working with people that are codependent.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Right. Yeah, it's you know, shells built on codependency.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
You know. I still have Melanie Babies book Codependent by
my bed. Yes, the language of letting go like it's
dog ear.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
For thirty years, it's still a classic to s and
I still pass it out to people.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
But you accept the codependence, of course I do, of
course I do.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
I just got to navigate in the right way because
the problem with codependency is this you can hide behind
I'm helping people, yeah, totally, but it becomes a prop
for you not to look at yourself and do the work.
It's a hustle it's a hustle. I'm such a good
person totally, but you're dying inside. That's right, right, Okay,

(43:10):
let's go to how did you come up with woman game?
Where did that come through? My God?

Speaker 2 (43:18):
I have so many crazy adventures, don't I. Yeah, when
I think about my life, you know what I was
thinking about yesterday? This is another crazy story. I was
at Pride yesterday in San Francisco. In San Francisco, I
saw this beautiful trans woman dressed so gorgeous walk by
me and this tall, dark skinned woman. She had her

(43:43):
I can't explain her off, but it was really beautiful,
and I thought about Marsha P. Johnson. Marsha P. Johnson
was no She was a huge transactivist during Stonewall Oh Wow.
And some say she threw the first shot glass at Stonewall.
And she lived in the West Village of New York City.
I lived, Oh Wow, So I would see her on

(44:05):
the streets. She was a little crazy. She was fabulous.
She always have flowers and brooches and darling and this
and that. So I know peripherally. And one day I
was sitting at the Hudson Pier with another boyfriend. I
but a lot of boyfriends in my life and something
was bobbing in the water and I was like, what

(44:25):
is that. He's like, it's a log and I'm like, no,
it's not, it's a head. We called the had someone
go call we didn't have cell phones. Then go call
the coastguard. They came, pulled the body up. It was Marcia.
It was Marsha P. Johnson. Was had to be that.
She was beaten to death and thrown in the river.
It was really really devastating. But guess what, people now

(44:50):
know her name. Right since her death, she's become more
powerful as devastating as it was at the time. You
ask any queer person, particularly trans person, and they know
who Marsha P. Johnson is. And back then we didn't
know what an activist she actually was. She lived her

(45:11):
life started like the law center there with Sylvia Rivera,
started fighting for trans rights. And I love that. So
I love history. I love history, and I love the
idea that you can live this extraordinary life. And maybe
you're not celebrated now in this part, but your legacy
and how you lived can actually affect generations to come.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Right, So talk to our listeners about that, because it's
a very important movie for people to watch.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
I think when I was a kid, I told you
about books. Yeah, success with books. We didn't have that
many books in my house. Romance novels which I like,
which obviously I lived most of them out. And then
we had encyclopedias, and I was obsessed with the pictures
of Africa and of different people in Africa. And I

(46:02):
would get confused when people said, and still do have
you been to Africa, even as a little kid, because
I would study the encyclopedias. I was like, do you
mean Nigeria, or do you mean South Africa? Or do
you mean Ethiopia. I understood from when I was a
little kid reading through all these different countries, and I

(46:23):
was so fascinated with Africa. So by the time I
was fifteen, I read out of Africa and I thought,
I need to go there one day. I have to
be in Africa. Who knows why. So when I first
made my money, when I first went did er, I
took myself for six weeks by myself to Africa. I

(46:44):
planned it myself with a book that I had read,
and went to Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, a
few other countries had this wild, spectacular experience. I do
like to travel on my own. I've done a lot
of that too, traveling on my own, and I just

(47:05):
knew it had so much life and energy for me,
and I can't explain why. So I'm a woman's history
women's history nut and I found the story many years ago.
All we know is there was this group of women
in benin Africa. They were five thousand women strong in

(47:25):
army of women in Benit. They called them the black
the women, the women Amazons. That's the that's the kind
of like the white man term. They said they were
the fiercest enemies they've ever gone up against. They were incredible,
this group of women. So I it was formulating in
my head for years, But what story can I tell

(47:47):
about these women? So the more and more research I
did and the more and more I lived, I wanted
to create a story about sisterhood. I want to create
a story that was like the Female Braveheart, because I
was so affected by that movie and it was really

(48:08):
about brotherhood and standing up for what's right. So I
created a story around this about a mother and a daughter,
and I tried to layer in social justice issues. So
one was rape as a weapon of war. I worked
with Save Dar for for a long time and I
helped to put together the first congressional hearing ever on

(48:30):
rape as a weapon of war. Like, yeah, yeah, it
goes deep. So I decided to layer that into the
story and to also, you know, there's besides, there's no
there hadn't been any big films, action films with all women,
like starring women until Wonder Woman that came in came

(48:51):
out right before that, actually right before I sold that,
I think Wonder Woman came out. There were no shows.
There were definitely no big budget movies with all black women.
The pl paid disparity. It's still horrible, but it was
way bad, right, So the idea was to get a
good budget where people women were properly paid to do

(49:14):
this kind of show. So there were It wasn't just like,
oh I want to tell this story. There were so many,
so many layers to it. It was shocking that it
got made. It took seven years.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
I wasn't even there for the shooting. I didn't even
know when they began shooting. I sort of drifted out
of it. It's like I did my part. I don't
know why the story came through me. I still don't
People don't understand why I got to tell this story.
I don't understand either, except I have a tattoo of
Africa on my hip. It's just always been my thing

(49:48):
and about women. And so I went to Benin last
year because I wasn't a part of the movie. The
making of the movie. Unfortunately it was. It was really
sad for me. But I now, I I don't understand
why at this point, but I know maybe it wasn't
my story to tell, like fully my story to tell,
but it was my seed. And I felt like a

(50:08):
little kid that just it. God sent me something, a
little seed, so I just have the I just planted
the seed. So I decided to go to Benin to
meet the real woman king and to do a pilgrimage
to this country and to give back and say thank
you that I got to tell this great story. So

(50:31):
I went with a friend and the woman King passes
her baraka, her spirit down to different generations. So there
was an actual woman there that had her spirit and
her baraka. So we drove out in the middle of
nowhere in the n to this woman King's you know,
her little cement house, and she was very, very powerful,

(50:55):
very powerful, and we had a translator and we talked
and basically she's like, what are these people doing here?
And I said, you know, I came to honor you
and thank you. This is they told her this is
the movie she did. And she was like, oh, and

(51:16):
she said, you have a question for me, and I
said yeah, and she said, and I said, why did
I get to tell this story? People want to know now,
people want to know that this why this woman who
came from a blue collar family in Philadelphia. I don't
know if I said that or she understood what that was.
Why I got to tell this story? And she said,

(51:38):
because we knew that you would tell it with integrity.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
I was like, whoa, whoa heavy because there was no celebration.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
She was right, by the way, She was very right.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Yeah, it's a beautiful film.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
She was very right.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Yeah, that's cool. It was a beautiful film. So it
was really interesting. She said she'd bless my family forever,
that my son will always be protected. I just walked
away from there like it was incredible. So yeah, that
was that was a real trip. It was a really journey,
you know what.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
I like it too. When people do things like that,
you create a lot of jobs.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah, You've put food on people's table, and I love
you for that.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
People have insurance because of you, and I love you
for that.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
That's really beautiful. That made me think of something. I
think I have this right, you'll tell me. Staying with
the theme of having your last few dollars, Yeah, you
took your beautiful boy on a trip to Africa with
your broke right.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
I was so broke, okay, listen, so so because I
could never hold a steady job. Yes, I couldn't stay
somewhere very long. I kept moving houses. My son's father
is so generous, but I was always determined from the beginning.
We pay half and half, take no money from you,
Like I am independent woman, hear me, roar, And I
love that about myself, by the way, And my mother

(53:02):
modeled that. How incredible that my mother was a working woman.
I'm really proud of her for that me too. Yeah,
And so I moved house to house. My son grew
up here in Venice, right around the corner. For seven years,
that's the longest I had a house, and then I
started bopping around. I'd stayed I'd rent houses then because
I couldn't really afford to buy a house after that

(53:22):
for a while, so I'd go to Malaboid to go
to Santa Monica. I go and he was just like
kind of traveling around La for a while. And at
one point I got down to like really it was
like my last like thousand dollars, Like it was bad,
and I had this group of girls, but I was

(53:42):
still living this beautiful life. But I really did not
know where I was going to get my next money.
And friends were going to Africa, to Kenya. So my
son was about at whatever, nine years old or something,
but it was ten thousand dollars for the both of
us to go, and I did not even have ten
thousand dollars, but something told me I was supposed to go.

(54:07):
So I borrowed money from a friend to take that
trip to Africa for ten thousand dollars, and it changed
my entire life. It changed my kid's entire life. It
opened up more. I have friendships with these people, with
those people I went with who I didn't know, are
like my family, some of my deepest friends. My son

(54:30):
will always have friends all over the world from different
countries because of that particular trip, and afterwards I came
back and I started working because I think when we
make an affirmation to the universe in that way, right, yes,
I'm going to trust this. Yes, I'm going to trust this,
and then more comes.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Right, you made a bet on yourself. Yeah, And that's
what we do. When you believe in yourself and love
you make a bet on yourself, even though it's fucking scary. Yeah,
even though world no, no, no, don't do that.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
You'll be in debt. You don't do that.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Make a fucking move sometimes, right to.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Make a move sometimes your bet on yourself.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Two things people find hard to believe about you.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
One, you've never been nominated for Academy Ward. People don't
understand that it's kind of crazy. And that you've never
been married until recently.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
I still can't believe that I'm saying I'm married. Yeah,
when I keep when I call her my wife, I
still shocked myself.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
I know.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
And you married it.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
I married you.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Six weeks ago in Kabo, Son Lucas.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
And that was that was probably one of the best
days of my life to celebrate with you being next
to you and everything that took for you to get
there and what you created, and you know, once again
you had the ability not to make it about you.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
You made it inclusive for people, which is your magic.
But I want to talk about Dom.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
Yeah, I want to talk about love and I want
to talk about the three c's fee.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Oh my god, what I don't know? It's you just
remind me of that wedding day, sitting up on the
stage with you two, the clear blue sky in that
ocean behind us. I mean, was it the most beautiful
lighting too? Anybody looks great in that light. But you
know you talked to about that Dom and I met.

(56:25):
You know, she's the only three star female Michelin chef
in America. She's a genius. Talk about an artist. I
still cannot comprehend how she does or what she does
because look her up. I mean, her food is art.
It's not just like a ham and cheese sandwich. It's
like a there's vessels and she chooses the vessels and

(56:47):
how it's gonna look, and it's smell and each tiny
flower and seed or whatever it is. It's insane how
she creates recipes. So I married a real I married
a real artist. But I went to her restauran in
San Francisco about six years ago, through a crazy turn
of events with a friend from Haiti with Lolo and

(57:09):
met her, and I knew we were gonna know each
other till the day we died. As soon as I
hugged her, soon as she walked through that restaurant, and
her long apron and her countenance, and she was so warm.
But I had just broken up with a guy. I
was so happy being saying I didn't want anything to
do with anyone. I had made a commitment, like I'm out.

(57:30):
I'm supposed to be single for the rest of my life,
which is a good option too, by the way, Like
I'm not putting that down, and that disturbs me a lot.
We should talk about that at some point, because I
have so many friends that are single who didn't have kids.
And then people are like this, well, you never got married,
how are you never kids? You're like, shut the fuck up.
Like I felt like it was such a good yeah,

(57:51):
right on, that would have been great for me. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
I always want to say, well, how's your marriage going? Yeah, right,
work out for you?

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (57:57):
All right?

Speaker 3 (57:57):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Yeah yeah. But about a year later then it started
to grow into something more. Like I didn't see her
very much that often, but I found myself thinking about
her and was like, huh, I think like this could
be something. She's very attractive woman, she's very beautiful, as
you know, charming. She comes in a room and takes
over a roof, doesn't she She's a big time she

(58:20):
could she played DJ at our wedding.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Yeah, big time. Yeah, she's something else. Yeah, she's talk
about creating magic.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
She creates magic wherever she goes, and she works so hard.
She works so hard. I feel so blessed. But anyway,
so we realized there was something more. And she was
with someone at the time, and I'm like, you know what,
but we're friends, Like, let's still fuck this up. You
take care of your stuff, I'll take care of my stuff,
and then we'll explore what this is. And don't you know,

(58:48):
before we even did that, she found out she had cancer.
So three weeks after we had this experience, she found
out she had stage three triple negative breast cancer. It
was devastating. And when she told me, what did I say?

(59:08):
I said, let's do cancer.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
Let's do cancer. That's only you can.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Okay, but I don't know, Okay, but I want to
bring it back to trauma because my mother had cancer
when I was growing up, right, so I learned how
to be with that, how to take care of someone
in that, and because of my codependency, right, I was
good at it, right the best. That's why disaster relief

(59:34):
is the same thing emergency situations. I'm great, Well, you
want me when there's agent see, except for COVID. I
kind of freaked out during COVID. But anyways, so she
found out. So we spent our first nine months of
our honeymoon with her getting sixteen rounds of chemotherapy and
losing her hair and half her body weight. But she

(59:56):
danced her way through it. She laughed, she danced, she smiled.
I is the one who was like exhausted. And then
as soon as that was over, finally after two months,
COVID came.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
So we went through cancer COVID, and that's what we
caught our wedding, the three seas cancer COVID and the
biggest of the three commitments, Oh gosh, it was, oh cancer,
forget it, COVID what commitment? Oh well yeah, but I'm

(01:00:35):
really glad I committed. I feel different. We haven't talked,
but I really felt the day after the wedding when
I woke up, I felt safer, m hm, I felt
more grounded. I felt like I could breathe for a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
The question, a lot of people are gonna go, Maria,
that's a beautiful love story. Why now? Why now did
you decide to like, you know what I want to
do this? What did a marriage mean to you?

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
It's different.

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
I think that there's a I think that there's a
couple of reasons for that, right, I think going through menopause,
and you've been through menopause with me, which has been
really fascinating. Must be fascinating for you as a man
to be with someone that's going through that, right, which
is this transition to the second half of life. And
I was fortunate enough to have you and to be
able to go to Paris for mine, right, right, like,

(01:01:32):
so we've had it was it's been an interesting process,
that whole sort of menopause, mid life, crossing over to
that to that second half of play.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
And you spent a lot of time in France.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Now, yeah, that's I think that's one of your fire
phrases of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
I feel my best there right, I feel my best there.
That's what I thought. Last week. I had my little dog.
We have this beautiful little dog called Lulu little Tuaua
and she never even barked before. She's so chill, she's
so cool. She lives in Paris, on a farm outside
of Paris. That's where she is mostly except when we're there.

(01:02:10):
But I started spending time there and walking. A flaneur
in French is traditionally a man at the turn of
the century who would walk around and define the city
by reading, by writing, by stopping and having conversation. But
he would speak the city. He would write the city.

(01:02:30):
So there's this word called flanouse that's just a made
up word now, and it means a woman who creates
the city by walking. So every day for some years,
you know, I would flannoose. Every day I'd just go
walk and I was just there for a couple of weeks,
and every day I'd have a destination. I'd be like, oh,
I'll go to Montmaut, there's this museum of the romantique

(01:02:53):
that I hadn't been to. I'll go to Monmouth and
then it might take me an hour and a half
to walk there. But I'll find all the back streets
and then I'll pause. I call the menopause the pause.
Then I would pause at a cafe, have a coffee,
maybe talk to someone there, keep walking, go to the museum. Oh,

(01:03:13):
stop at this restaurant, have dinner. Like just sort of
being in the flow of one thing to the other.
Walking really really helps me, really helps my head. And
being in a city really helps my head. And I
love the community there. I can see growing old there
because there's community. Because right outside my window is our

(01:03:34):
local bistro where I know every single waiter. They know me.
We know our cheese guy. You know Frank Abdel, We
know Soussu the organic grocer. We have our market guys.
When I was there last week, everybody know we've gotten married,
so they all see an instagram in the pictures. So
when I walked down my street, when I was at
the market the other day, my new Jean Mark, it's

(01:03:54):
like the fishmonger and the cheese guy at the market,
there was a tittering through the market that I was
back because I hadn't been there for a couple of months,
and they all gave me free free food.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
That all we'll just give you some love.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Yeah, because the wedding. They were just so excited about
the wedding. On say, mary A, I had to learn
how to say we got married, right because because everyone was. Yeah,
it's good to have community. Community is really important.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
Community is I think the most important. You've got to
have a tribe.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
That is another great example of kindness, respects kindness.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
They people appreciate you because you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Appreciate them, because I think to appreciate somebody at that level,
you see things people don't see because you pay attention. Yeah,
and that's our job. Our job is to pay attention,
open your fucking eyes to what's happening in front of you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
That's right, right, Yeah, it's not about us.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Yeah, but we can't hope to not make it about us.
Of course, I need to be like self indulgence. And
sometimes I feel like when I do therapy and stuff,
it feels self indulgent, But it doesn't feel self indulgent
with you. It feels like we're we're taking layers apart
in order to give more perhaps and working through our

(01:05:21):
own stuff. Right. Like I definitely had this moment when
we took a break, Like I told you, is it
good enough? Is it okay? Am I saying the right thing?
Am I? Are people going to be moved by this?
Are they going to think it's stupid or like all
of this fucking voices in your head that go? But
what I realize now is everybody has them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Everybody everything, everybody, including the Dollai lama, including the polpet.
Everybody does right, right, exactly right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Everybody doesn't. Some are just better at the translation how
to deal with it?

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Yeah, but again, acceptance, acceptance, when you roll into acceptance,
that's your starting point, Like, oh yeah, I do that,
that's normal, Like people do that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Let's see, how was something I really want to? I
want to We've got to roll up with this people.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
Maria beautiful, married to this rule class chef, get it,
be in Paris, travel around the world, do all these things.
Oh you have you work on it every single day.
You have a daily reprieve based on your spiritual maintenance.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
You do the work.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
There's no nobody gets out. So let's just be very clear.
You busted your ass to get a place where you
can actually be kind of generous to yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:06:34):
Yeah, it's a it's a work you do every day.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Yes, but I have to admit, we haven't seen each
other for a while. I haven't been doing it every day.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Sino's very into morning routine, yes, which when I do it,
I feel great. Okay, which is that you every morning,
same thing, whatever your thing is. I was what I
would do is I'd stay in a bed, I'd meditate
for like ten minutes. I'd get up and I do
weights on the floor. Then I'd go for a while
I write my gratitude journal. Well, I haven't been doing

(01:07:03):
it for since I got married, by the way, so
you know, I kind of after the wedding, I just
went like okay and got to Thailand and did nothing.
But I have been walking.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
I love that You're very clever.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Say this to the end, because we're afting to have
emergency session right after this. Okay, exactly with this Vernon
Foster you maybe man, No, he's such a beautiful guy.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
We did a workshop yesterday. He's a Native American. Incredible story.
He says. The most important thing to do this first
thing in the morning, say thank you. I love to
say thank you. Start there, thank you, thank you for
being on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
I'd like to say thank you to you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Mike.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for there's
a lot of people out to him.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
Maria, thank you for being there in the world and
giving this podcast to everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
Amen, Well, I love you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:46):
The Sino Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People in twenty eighth.
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carlack. Our executive producer
is Lindsay Hoffman. Marking lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see you next week.