December 11, 2023 • 44 mins
L.L. Kirchner shares her story as the author of Blissful Thinking, a sweeping story of the search for nirvana that took L.L. Kirchner from university halls in the Persian Gulf to the streets of Manhattan to a sex cult in India. Between her family’s gym and the years she’d spent in substance abuse recovery, Kirchner felt grounded in physical and spiritual wellness. Then her husband demanded a divorce. Over the telephone.
To avoid a return to her addictions the author tries yoga, meditation, chanting — all the things meant to cultivate bliss and regain trust in the universe. Each brings some relief, but her search for the answer outside herself ignores the fact that her painful family dynamics remain unresolved. Until she discovers the gift her mother had always
given her — hope. Kirchner captures the terrors and joys of searching for radical
honesty — and a second date.
An award-winning screenwriter and author of the forthcoming Blissful Thinking, L.L. Kirchner's first memoir, American Lady Creature, was named one of Bustle's "11 Books to Battle the Blues." She's a live on-air host on the Home Shopping Network, & runs a live, monthly storytelling show, True Stories. Her writing can be found in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, and Salon among many others. She lives in Florida with her dog Hartley and her favorite husband. More at www.LLKirchner.com.
On socials everywhere @llkirchner_
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
This is Angela Grayson fromthe Loving Life Fitness Podcast.
To help others in their fitnessjourney.
It's all possible! It’s timeto wake up.
(00:35):
Here we go.
Hello, everybody.
This is Angela Graysonfrom a Loving Life
Fitness Podcast where we talkto professionals and everyday
people about theirfitness journey in life.
Or maybe they'd like to talkabout things that help others
to live their best life.
(00:56):
Okay.
And today, we'll be talkingto L.L.
Kirchner about her lifeand her journey and the stories
that she's written.
So, hi, How are you doing today?
I'm good, Angela.
How are you?
Oh, I'm doing great.
Happy and excitedto hear your story
and have you share it withmy listeners.
Let's go back to the beginning.
(01:17):
When you were a young womangrowing up, what was your life
like back then and maybe how itinspired you to become
what you are today?
Well, you know, it's funnybecause I grew up probably on
a trajectory that might nothave included indoor plumbing.
I, I landed in rehab by the timeI was 19.
And it wasn't because myparents sent me.
(01:39):
I actually dragged my own buttinto into a rehab facility
when I was in college.
But, you know, my dad owneda health club, which is
an interesting backdrop to,you know, becoming a burgeoning
alcoholic and drug addict.
And he had quit his, you know,job in corporate steel in order
(02:00):
to run this business of his own,which was really unusual.
Or back then, peopledid not have, you know, the
entrepreneurial hustlewas not a thing so much then.
I mean, sure, you hadmom and pop stores, but,
you know, quittinga corporate job to open a health
club was weird.
But I was definitely aroundfitness trends from a young,
(02:22):
young age, but veryfrustrated by my mom.
What I saw as my mom's sort ofpassive acceptance
of all the things that mydad wanted to do.
And I kind of thought,I'm going to do the opposite,
you know, whichI don't even know.
You know, kids are.
The thing is, is I hadstarted exercising
from a young age when I wasvery young.
(02:42):
I was trying to impress my dad,who was always into fitness.
And I would try to runand pretend I was sporty.
And I'm not a super sportyperson, but if I don't
exercise, my body is almost likeI rusts or something,
you know, is just doesn'tfunction well.
I discovered that reallyin my thirties when I
moved to Qatar, which is,you know, the subject
(03:03):
of my first book, American LadyCreature, where I wind up
living in the Persian Gulf.
I've been working,not working out and just
getting more and more miserable.
I don't have oneof those stories
where, you know, there's amassive change in like,
I didn't go from being one sizeto a radically different size,
(03:23):
nothing like that.
It was really morea question of how
I felt in my body.
And it was terrible.
I mean, I'd been soberfor a long time
at that point, so it wasn'teven that.
It was just working all the timeand not exercising
made me miserable.
And the gyms there heldladies hours while this lady
was working so I couldn'tget to the gym.
(03:45):
So I started doing yoga.
And that really, I wouldsay, changed the trajectory
of my life.
That happens to a lot of peoplewith yoga.
It's a lot of mental thingsthat go on when practicing yoga.
If you get involvedwith the books and the Buddhism
doesn't have to necessarily bedeeply, but it definitely
(04:05):
can make changes in your life.
I also know that yougot involved in meditation
pretty deeply.
Do you think thatthat had an effect on where
your life went?
Well, absolutely.
So when I was living inQatar, my my husband
ended our marriage over thetelephone.
He had gone there with me.
I actually took the job therein order to try to help
(04:28):
boost his career as a freelancejournalist.
You know what better placethan to be located at the center
of world news, right?
In 2004, the Persian Gulfwas hot in terms of all
of the world News eventsthat were happening there
when he left.
The idea was he was going to gorestarting lives back in
the United States.
And then he calledand he told me he wanted
(04:49):
a divorce.
Actually, I called him.
It's very intense.
I like to say our marriageended a lot.
Like the whole part of themarriage was, you know, I
he basically said it and Imade it happen.
But there I was.
I have this corporate job.
I mean, I was teaching yogaalready at that point, not as a
certified teacher,but as just a very
eager student, because whenI knew my husband
(05:10):
would be leaving, I signed up toteach this class because
I knew that I neededsomething more to do.
Because there's a nondrinkerswho doesn't really like to shop.
It was not a lot for mein the Persian Gulf to do.
And so I went to India initiallyand got this yoga
teacher training because to meit felt like a way of showing
(05:31):
I hadn't been just completelymowed down by this divorce.
I was not just quittingmy job and, I don't know, going
back home and gosh,what would I do at home?
People would be like, So where'syour husband?
I mean, I don't know.
You know, I didn't want to faceall that.
So I, I signed up for a yogateacher.
I was never going to teach yoga.
I mean, come on.
I was 40 years old.
(05:53):
Who's going to want to takefitness classes from a 40 year
old woman, let alone yoga?
You know, I just.
It just seemed ridiculous.
Me Which is funnybecause, again,
my dad had startedthis health club when he was
around 40.
And in a weird way, I was doingthe exact same thing.
He did the exactsame thing, sort of starting
my own business, but I didn'tdo it intentionally.
(06:13):
I went to go take thisyoga training and it was like
it gave me a deadline,like a reason to finally
get out of Qatar because Isort of like spun
around in Qatar for anothernine months.
After he left, I was like, Oh,I know what to do.
What am I going to do?
You know, I get thereand through all this
I was a smoker, right?
I had been smoking.
And, you know, I thought, I'mnever going to be able to quit
(06:35):
because I triedall kinds of ways to quit.
You know, the pill patches,the gum sometimes
all three at once.
I get to Qatar and I havea miracle.
I just quit smoking.
I do.
A few days went by and I beforeI realized, like I am a cigaret
in a few days and I have thiscarton of Dunhill
that I hang on toand I'm taking it
(06:55):
with me everywhere because Ithink, well, this madness
will end and I will want to goback to smoking.
And it just never did.
There have been a very few timeswhere I have thought
about smoking.
Very few in the last.
I mean, gosh, how many yearshas that been now?
26 to now?
You know, I don't believeI could ever quit on my own.
I truly think that wasa miracle.
(07:15):
And and so that's whatset off this frenzied
spiritual search that became,you know, the second book,
Blissful Thinking, because Idefinitely needed something more
out of my life.
And I was afraid I was goingto potentially relapse
because my heartwas just broken.
And I knew that the answerwas more spirituality.
(07:38):
And I thought, well, if if Indiacan serve up this miracle
of quitting smoking,what happens if I apply myself
just a little?
And that's, you know,basically what
the book is about,what brought you there and kept
you there was your searchfor spiritual while. No.
Yes.
Yes.
And after your divorce, you wereheartbroken.
(08:02):
I'm sure you feel emotionallybroken.
Were you looking for anotherrelationship?
Well, gosh, no, not I mean,not in the short term,
that's for sure.
I didn't start actually thinkingabout a relationship
until almost probably two yearsafter that marriage ended.
I was in unions.
(08:23):
I remember it very clearly.
It's actually a scenein the book.
I was in the Whole Foodsin Union Square, New York City.
And this couple wasjust they're just standing in a
grocery line and, you know,they're sort of
being affectionateand like rubbing
each other's backs or whatever,looking at the candles
and talking about like how it'sgoing to go in their
living room.
(08:43):
And I just was seized with thisjust like I miss
having a partner.
I came to the realizationthat no matter how crappy
my marriage went, I wanted toget married again.
I would like to have thatkind of relationship Now.
By the end of this story,I could not have cared less
if I got married again.
(09:04):
But that was a long journey toget there.
It didn't mean that I didn'twant to have relationships, but
it didn't need to looklike that.
That set off that otherkind of longing.
And again, I had I wasoperating under, you know,
that assumptionthat so many of us have, Angela,
where we thinkI seem more normal if I have
(09:25):
a relationship, people thinksomething's wrong with me
if I don't have a relationship.
And especially ifyour marriage ends
in spectacular fashion,it's like, Whoa,
son must really bewrong with her.
He had a run screaming intothe night like he had to travel
eight time zones away beforehe could let her know
that it was over.
And then there wasno explanation.
You know, it wasn't likewe lived in the same city
(09:46):
or we saw each other.
We had absolutely no reasonto connect except, you know,
some like minorfinancial things.
And that was, again, I felt likeI had to just chase and down
and get that stuff to happen.
And it was was such a dragand yet so difficult.
But did you feel likehe left you because of things
going on with you, or did heleave you because of things
(10:09):
going on with him?
Well, I mean, that's reallythe great mystery
at the center of of both books.
Really.
I had no idea.
I mean, he did grant meone one out was because
I forced his hand, likeI took home his dogs.
And from Qatar to the U.S.,he granted me an hour
long meeting to pick up his dog.
(10:30):
And he basically said he didn'tfeel like being married anymore.
Now, at this point in my life,I can say we were
not a good match.
But then, I mean, I grew upmoving around a lot.
And like I said, I was resentfulof how it looked to me,
like my mom was justkind of going along with
everything that my dad wanted.
So it wasn't an example.
It wasn't a couple.
(10:51):
It was not a like a hashtagcouples, right?
I never thought I wouldget married or have children,
you know?
And I was pretty well convincedthat if I called my mother
and said, you know, I'mI'm going to be out hard driving
career woman never married tonothing but my my job
and never having childrengentlemen like to go achieve
(11:14):
like she never she nevermade the house or you look like
it was any fun right?
She she was a very typicalseventies suburban mom.
I mean you know Erma Bombeckfamously did a survey of her
audience asking if you couldhave children.
Now, knowing what you knownow, would you do it again?
And like 78% of the respondentssaid no.
(11:35):
And I think my momwould have been among those
you know, you have to remember,birth control wasn't legal.
Abortion was definitely notlegal.
You know, it was verydifferent times, except it was
also very much the same times.
We saw a few more options,like birth control
is more accessible to unmarriedwomen.
But other than that,we're regressing.
We're going in thewrong direction.
It'll be interesting to seewhat happens.
(11:56):
You know, she didn'thave a choice.
She wanted me to have choicesand ultimately I realized that,
you know, the choicesthat I would want.
I do like being inrelationship, but, you know,
it doesn't needto look completely standard,
although at this pointin my life, I am in, you know,
(12:17):
a heteronormative standard kindof relationship.
I'm a new grandma.
Okay.
That's all pretty interestingstuff to see how your
your mom's life was going in hermarriage with the decisions
that she made or shewas forced into.
And so you wantedto live your life differently,
we see.
(12:37):
So that you could make youryour own decisions about where
your life was going to go.
One of the things that you saidyou would like to talk about
is what early menopause led youto discover about internalized
misogyny.
Explain that.
Well, first, I will saythat's really the theme of
(12:58):
the first book.
You know, how living inone of the world's
most patriarchal culturesreally showed me how I had
internalized misogyny.
But I didn't I didn't.
That sentence is not inthe book.
It's definitely a story.
But for me, you know,when I came back and again,
(13:20):
this is going way back againto the first book,
this other book just came out,but the first book,
when it came, before itcame out, when I first came
back to the States from Qatar,this was when Hillary Clinton
was running against Barack Obamafor the nomination for the
Democratic Party nomination.
And we also had John McCainjust announcing Sarah Palin
(13:41):
becoming his vice presidentialchoice, which is interesting
because if you think about itnow, they don't announce
that soon.
They're not bringing thatup to the table.
But anyway, all over the media,it was Hillary Clinton
and Sarah Palin.
They were presentedas our options.
Right?
You can be a bitch oryou can be a bimbo.
That was it.
And I would tell people,I'm just back from Qatar
and they'd be like, Oh,how can you stand it there?
(14:02):
Now, feminism also at the timewas considered a dirty word, so,
Oh, happy just in living there.
They treat women so badly there.
And I think and youreally think we're doing so much
better here.
You know, one of the many thingsthat that happened
through the course of my timein that book, I had to deal
with a lot more sexismand bad behavior, you know,
of bad behavior.
(14:22):
I was sexually harassed bya Western colleague and then
basically told I should brush itunder the rug by my Western
colleagues.
And I was treated much better.
I had much more interestinginteractions with the people
from Qatar, the Qatari,not necessarily Qatar.
I mean, there are alot of expats.
They might have been Yemenior from Bahrain or you know,
(14:44):
there's there are alot of expats there,
not a lot of American expats,which was another thing.
So I could be in a room with allthe people who maybe English
was their native language,but some of them were first
from New Zealand, so thenfrom the UK, Ireland, Scotland,
like, you know, it would be ait was a very interesting
(15:05):
time and place anyway.
So when I, when I got tothe point of it was time to,
you know, figure out where I waslike the whole idea of misogyny
and how that fit into the book.
At 38 years old, I moved therewhen I was about 38, and when
I was 39, I, I hadn't had myperiod for a year, but
(15:27):
I had also beenvery busy working.
So I went to the doctorat the urging of a friend.
It hadn't occurred to mebecause I was so busy
and he said, He's the one whoultimately told me that I was
in menopause.
I mean, this was after a surgeryto take out a cyst in my ovary.
And then after that he was like,Oh, by the way, you're in
(15:47):
menopause.
And you know, what is it?
Because the surgery that waswhat was happening.
And I was shocked.
You know, I had been angry,I had been sweaty and I had
been overwhelmed,but I was living in a desert
culture where the languagewas on my own.
You know, it was hot.
People didn't understand mewhen I spoke.
(16:08):
And my friends and familylive eight times on the way.
This is very muchmimics menopause.
Like I had no idea that I wasin menopause.
So I woke up to the the factof being menopausal and,
you know, then my husband left.
We at first we tried to actuallylike last gasp, have kids
and we did a little IVFand that didn't work out.
(16:29):
And, you know, then he leftand I was in a country
where it's illegal to date,so I had to rediscover who I was
as a woman within theconfines of this culture.
And I really realized howI had, as I said, internalized
misogyny, because, for instance,you know, I when the dust
(16:50):
kind of settled, I was like,Oh my God, I I'm
going to turn 40.
I can't have kids,and I'm divorced.
Like, who is goingto want me now?
Who's going to want to date me?
And I had to recognize,like I had long been criticizing
the country culturefor valuing women
primarily as wives and mothers.
And I was like,I do the same thing.
(17:12):
I just decorate it a littledifferently.
You are interesting,but so telling you I read
your blissful thinking is very,very good.
I recommend that highly tothe listeners, so I'm going to
have to read the first one.
Now it's free on KindleUnlimited if you have
that so parcel.
So living in a in a culturewhere you're not allowed
to date, even as an American,I mean, you have to
(17:35):
abide by their rules,otherwise they look down on you.
Yes.
Oh, it's more than looking down.
They'll kick you outlike they're kidding around.
Yeah.
The penalties are stiff forcultural infractions.
And how long did you live there?
Three years.
And you're not allowed a date.
So where does that take you?
Where does that take your mind?
(17:56):
You're a young woman.
How could you not date?
What would you do?
I did not date.
I mean, first of all,one of the things that you have
to keep in mind is the husbandI like, he left.
So I actually went backand did a another job
there in date.
But you're also very consumedwith your work.
When I was there the first time,he had been there
(18:16):
for about a year and a half,and then I was there for about
another year after he was gone.
So, you know, I was not reallyin the mood to date.
Now, that doesn't meanI didn't want sex.
Those are two different things.
But I would travel to have sex.
I love the country.
You know, when you're traveling,this is the great thing.
This is why so many post-divorcememoirs are about travel,
because, you know,you go traveling and you're in
(18:39):
a different placeand you get to try on different
personalities and you meet lotsof people if you're
traveling alone.
I mean, I think thatif I had traveled with other
with groups or something,I would not have met nearly as
many people or addnearly the variety
of experiences that I had.
But because I went everywhereby myself, I met
(19:00):
a lot of people.
And so, no, I didn't.
I didn't date.
I did have a torrid affairwith a coworker, but he had
a girlfriend who he was doinga long distance
relationship with.
Again, this is allin the book, so I don't know
if that answers your questionor not.
Yeah. Okay.
So also you do it secretly.
I guess.
(19:20):
There's always secrets.
More fun that way, right?
Okay.
So you ended up visitingdifferent cults.
Yeah.
So when I left Qatar, Iand went to India.
Now there's a coupleof different things.
One, and I talked about thisin the book, Amanda
Mantel's book called Cultish,which defines cults kind of as
any group that sets itself offby a means of language.
(19:43):
And I think that's a veryinteresting way to look at it.
And when you thinkabout it that way,
we all participate in a numberof cults.
And I think the reason for meit's really important to
talk about that is because it'svery easy to otherize people
who end up in cults, right?
Well, that would neverhappen to me.
But, you know, you send themto an Orange City class
and they're talkingabout their splats and they're
(20:04):
you know, they're they're squatsand they're burpees.
And you know, you get awhole language going.
And how is that a cult?
Well, you might think,okay, people in cults,
they live together and theydress weird and they don't
have any money.
And that's not true of everysingle cult, Right.
So, you know, it'sjust a framework
that I quite like.
And I think one of thereasons that I didn't get
(20:24):
sucked in, as it were, to anyof the cults that I have
belonged to, although Istill belong like Orange Theory
is one of my cults.
I and yoga is definitelyone of my cults.
But the reason that I haven'tever gotten really sucked in
is one thing that my motherdid give me was a terrific
love of language.
And I just I can't like,like hokey linguistic
(20:47):
conventions kind of ata certain point, I'm like,
Oof, no, no, thank you.
Like, I can't I can'tsign up for that.
So that probably saved me.
But yeah, I went to you know,you could say the first one
was the ten daysilent meditation that I did
at the beginning of the book.
That's a kind of occultmeditation.
And in New York I visitedsome different, you know,
(21:09):
I felt like chanting groupswere a bit of a cult.
And then when I went back,that's when I went to the sex
cult, which, you know, this isthe other thing that I like
to say about cultsis that they don't become
wildly popular because they havenothing of interest to offer.
Right.
So Osho is a very famous cult.
This is the cult that I visit,the sex cult that I visit
(21:31):
in the book.
And it was made more currentlywell-known by this
recent documentary called Wild,Wild Country.
And it was all aboutthe Rajneesh.
She's so Shree Raj.
One magnet was theit was his name before he
sort of became this eponymousguru, Osho, which is what
(21:53):
his place in Indiais called in Puna.
But here in the States, whichI had no idea about this,
he had established an outpostin Oregon and that outpost
really went off the rails.
I mean, they basicallytried to take over
the governance of a small townbecause they were having
(22:14):
trouble doing the kindsof things that they wanted to do
within that town.
So they wanted to be in charge.
You know, if there'smaking rules, they're not
going to get in trouble.
And they tried to do thingslike put salmonella
poisoning into the unlessit was botulism, but I think
it was salmonella into the localfood bar.
And, you know, and I'm say likethey really went for it.
(22:36):
And the thing about it that was,you know, again,
unbeknownst to me at the time.
But the thing about Osho,his message essentially this is
what was compellingis that, you know,
we should love everybodyand that's compelling.
And he again, you cantake a look at it from his
background as aas an Indian man, which is
(22:57):
a very repressive, sexuallyrepressive culture.
You know, he thought thatsex was the closest that we get
to the state of no mindwhen we're in orgasmic
the orgasmic state.
But this is not why I went.
The reason that I wanted to goto Osho was for family,
constellation therapyand the world of other
alternative healing modalitiesthat they had.
They're like under one.
(23:18):
It's like this smorgasbord ofalternative wellness, right?
You couldn't get cranial sacralmassage in the morning
and you're doing entireVedic astrology course
in the afternoon,and then you do the mystic Rose
meditation at night.
So you can just go fromone thing to the other all day
long, which I did and Ikind of loved.
(23:38):
But then, you know, afterI'd been there for a while
and nobody was coming on to me,I was like, Wait a minute,
what's the while?
How long did you stay?
I was there for just two weeks.
But, you know, believe me,it starts happening quickly.
You're like, Wait a minute,Why is no one going on to me?
Okay, So is that whyyou ended up not staying at any
of the Colts?
Because ultimately it was okayfor the time that it lasted,
(24:03):
but then on to the next thing?
Well, no, I think that it'sthe hokey linguistic
conventions.
Right.
Talking that the languagethat they use, it's
just it's it's not meaningfulto me.
It stops being meaningfulwhen everybody's parroting
each other.
It sounds like blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I don't take it seriously.
(24:24):
So I can't I can't buy into it.
So I find cultish languageto be off putting.
I think it's one of the reasonswhy I don't like,
like a boot camp style trainingcrusher.
I like all that's like,okay, okay, please just let me
figure it out myself, okay?
Something and some peoplereally respond
to that, you know, the energyof a lot of people.
(24:45):
Yeah. Yeah.
They modeling and it's not likeI judge and I think that that's
a thing.
And that's one of the reasonswhy it can be easy to
end up in a cult isif you think that that's not
the kind of thing that will everhappen to you.
Are you still teachingyoga today?
Well, you know, I've taughta couple of yoga workshops
and since my this newbook came out, but really
(25:08):
with the pandemic,I kind of stopped teaching yoga.
It was really challenging,as you know, or maybe
I don't know, I don't know.
I work for the HomeShopping Network.
I'm a I'm an on air guest,so I don't often have control
over my schedule.
So it makes it very challengingto teach yoga when you can't
(25:29):
do it on a consistent basis.
And what about your meditationpractices?
Do you still go back to that?
So it's very interestingand I think I'd share with you,
but I'm not sure and I need toI need to revise this piece.
I made a quiz about figuring outwhat your ideal meditation
(25:49):
style was based on, youknow, answers to questions.
And the quiz would show youto basically a meditation style
after you answer the questions.
But then at the bottom,it's like, or you might
like one of theseand you go through the process.
And what's interestingabout that for people is
(26:09):
that and for me is thatpart of the discovery was,
oh, I don't have to justdo silent meditation
and be miserablebecause, you know,
Silent Mentation in some sensewas like the sex cult, right?
I was like, Why?
Everyone's finding their bliss?
I'll all I can findis my inner bitch.
And she is pissed, right?
(26:30):
My inner Buddha was like nowhereto be found.
Now, ultimately, and it wasat another cult.
I found my inner Buddha andit was a shock, but that's
how buried it was.
We all have all of these storiesthat we layer on top of our
innermost selves to kind ofput ourselves out there
in the world.
Mine just happened to be buriedsuper deep, and when I got to
(26:54):
it, it was a real revelation.
Again, I didn't want to saythat either because you talk
about that a little bit more,how you were able to break down
all those barriers to.
Well, I think it wasthe culmination
of all those years of searchingfor me.
Some people, they can sitin meditation and connect
with it right away, but I havea very hardwired, stubborn
(27:19):
storytelling gene, I guess.
And it's it it just coversover things.
What I recognized was this senseinside myself that was
free of stories, and it was atthe Balanced View center in Goa.
And she had been talking abouttheir big thing is to observe
everything that happens as data,not to take it personally,
(27:42):
just to see everything as data.
And when you allow that, you canallow yourself to just be
you don't have tochange anything.
You don't have to modifyanything.
And this is all news to me.
I was like, what?
I because my entiresearch had been, Oh my God,
what is wrong with me andhow can I fix it so I can never
(28:03):
make these mistakes again?
And here is this person saying,you don't have to
change anything.
You don't have to do anythingdifferently.
There's nothing inherentlywrong with you.
Now, surely I had heardthese messages before,
like I had heard someone saysomething similar to that.
This is just what resonatedfor me at that time.
And I was able then I guess itit induced enough of a
(28:25):
calm in me that I was ableto be conscious of that.
Once you're conscious of theof the inner Buddha, I think
that you can tap into itmuch more readily.
So once you have tapped into it,then I think you should
you should go for it.
And I definitely like theirpractice, which is taking
short moments where youjust release all storytelling
(28:45):
and tap into your inner Buddha.
But then I do lots of otherpractices too.
I love yoga and Nedra to kind offull scale body relax.
I love doing walking,meditation, moving meditation,
eating, meditation,and sometimes still silent
meditation.
But I no longer laborunder the belief that somehow
silent meditation is superiorand that the worse I feel, the
(29:07):
better it probably is.
Do you still find yourselflayering on the storytelling?
In what context?
So everyday life,things that go on?
Or do you try to stay?
For sure I catch myselfdoing that right.
It's just a it's a habit.
(29:28):
But I don't believe it anymore.
I think that's the bigdifference.
Like, I used toreally believe it.
The first thing that puncturedit was when I, you know,
when I got into recoveryand there's a famous passage
in the seminal recovery textcalled Alcoholics Anonymous
or referred to as the big book,where he talks about We saw
(29:49):
the world is this is paraphrase,you know, we saw the world is
our theatrical stage.
And if only everybody woulddo what we wanted them to do of
the players would moveinto the scenes as we dictate,
you know, that sort of a thing.
And I thought,Oh shit, I do that all the time
like that, really.
You know, I reallyhad this belief, like I was some
sort of master marionette playeror something.
(30:10):
And so that was a big that was abig puncture to that, you know,
that was when I was 19, butthat still wasn't the final
the FE accompli.
I think really a lotof the experiences of this book
were what led to puncturingmy belief that I'm right,
you know, and evenjust living in another culture,
you live in another cultureand you see the world
(30:32):
news reported fromsomebody else's perspective.
And I'm not talkingabout your reading one story.
I mean, everything all the timeis this other cultures
perspective and the next thingyou know, you're seeing things
differently, too.
I remember I'll never forget I'min the airport in Germany
and this woman walks byin a mini skirt and like a
(30:52):
halter top.
And I thought, Cover yourself.
You know what I mean?
Because I was so used to beingin a culture where women
were wrapped head to toein black and fully covered.
And I also dressedvery covered up because I didn't
want to be judgedfor exposing flesh on my butt.
(31:13):
It's like I just I don't wantto deal with it, you know?
That's not the hill that Iwant to die on today.
So many other things.
Now you do a story telling oncea month, a live storytelling.
I do, yeah.
And you have one coming upNovember 30th.
I know.
This week.
Yeah.
I'm anxious to get on thereand listen to that.
(31:35):
Tell us about your storytelling.
What?
Well, you can't reallylisten to it.
It's a live event.
So, Angela, you got tocome visit St Petersburg
to go to the show.
How am I?
I love the storytellingcommunity that we have here
because it's allabout telling true
personal stories.
You know, when I firstmoved to New York,
I got involved with The Moth.
I eventually became a storycoach for them, and I just loved
(31:59):
the community that it built.
Because when when peoplego on stage and tell true
personal stories,it's not just, Oh,
here's a troll under the bridge.
It was an interesting story,my friend.
It's more like, Oh my gosh,that happened to me too.
You know, my my,I had a boyfriend dumped me
just the same wayor whatever it is.
And then people can connectand relate off the stage.
(32:19):
It made New Yorka very small city for me
and just loved it.
And it was a very casual,you know, vibe.
It wasn't like you had.
It's not like famous peopleare going on stage and doing
a performance, you know, a storyThat's part of the the beautiful
thing about this communityor the storytelling community
in general is when youencourage people to just share
(32:42):
their stories, it's different.
You know, it'snot a performance.
It's not meant tobe performative.
So you get to know people.
But this show, the thingwe're doing this
month is adulting.
Next month we'll do family.
I always do some variationon that around the holidays,
but nothing tooloaded, you know.
And so more than oneperson talk.
Oh yeah so it's I mean similarI don't know if you're familiar
(33:04):
with the moth but when yougo to a slam, you everybody
puts their name into some sortof container and bucket hat
or whatever, and the namesget called out at random
and it lasts for a certainamount of time.
Okay, So Saint Petersburgand how long do you usually
talk for?
Well, everybody gets 5 minutesto share their true
personal story.
(33:25):
Yeah, it's it's a greatcontainer one because it's it's
challenging, right.
Yeah.
But two, it's also greatif you're in the audience
and somebody is telling a storyand it's not going anywhere
and you're thinking, oh my gosh,when's it's going to be over?
You know, nobody's going to takethe mic hostage except me.
I probably taught the most.
(33:46):
Okay.
To maintain your your sobriety.
Okay.
This is something thatyou have to work really hard at
throughout your entire lifeor has it become easier for you?
Yeah, I don't know if Iwould call it hard work.
I mean, hard work as beingan active alcoholic or and drug
addict, Right?
That's hard work.
(34:06):
Yes.
Recovery is somethingthat you always have to or,
you know, I always want to bemindful of because it's
never going to be okay.
Now, we we you do itall the time, that one.
That's just not how it works.
So from that aspect. Yes.
And then, you know, when youlook at long term recovery,
the challengesare very different
(34:26):
than they are.
Like when you first get sober,it's like, oh, God,
where's my car?
Is that my urine?
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you know, when you'relike, at this point
I have 27 years of sobrietyand the challenges
are more like, Oh, I wishI didn't say that thing than my
mother in law.
Do you know what I mean now?
But it can it can createthe same level of discomfort
(34:47):
like that.
That level of discomfort iswhat makes it difficult to
to process.
So for me, I need tonot be in that state
of discomfort caused bymy own bad, unfortunate,
ill timed actions.
That's not the same as sayingyou not ever feel uncomfortable
because, you know, risk takingis all about feeling
(35:09):
uncomfortable.
And discovery is abouta willingness to feel
uncomfortable.
I would never put out a bookif I was not willing to feel
uncomfortable.
Right.
Because nothing will make youfeel uncomfortable.
Like, you know, somebody reviewof your book.
Well, that's part of growingand learning, right?
And moving on to the next thing.
(35:29):
Feeling uncomfortableand getting gas up and dealing
with the discomfort.
Oh, yeah.
So now you're living with youryour dog Hartley and
your favorites.
I hear you've got Hartleywith you, too.
Yes.
Keep our pets close by.
Yes.
He's smaller, though, so youcan't really see him.
He is fading himself right now.
(35:52):
And I like the way you callyour husband.
Your favorite husband.
Yes.
That's so far.
So far.
So far.
And where did you find him?
Did you find him abroador did you find him at home?
No, actually, we met herein Florida, which
I certainly would never haveimagined.
(36:12):
You know, and it's I kind ofglancingly referred to it
at the end of the book, but notreally head on, because
it was really important to menot to tell a story
where the happily ever afteris based on getting into some
other relationshiplike that to me is incredibly
not satisfying because Ithink, well, you might
(36:35):
just end up having thesame problems that you
had before.
And like I said, I start offthinking that's going to
kind of show that I haveovercome my obstacles.
And I at the end,I recognize really that that is
is not an indicatorof obstacles in life, is to have
(36:56):
a relationship.
It's just it's just notthe most important thing is
to have that comfortin your own skin, no matter
what is happening, becauseuncomfortable things will always
be happening, whether it isto improve yourself
by working out or taking adifferent job or, you know,
staying put even.
And that can be veryuncomfortable.
(37:18):
Yeah, life is a journey andno matter where it takes
us, we have to work our waythrough it.
And that's part of it.
That's a big part of it.
It's not always about thedestination and getting
to the end, because thenthe what?
The journey has to continue.
That's right.
Yeah.
All right.
I always like toask the question
(37:39):
if you would like to give a goalto our listeners to reach for
so that they can live theirbest life, what would you like
to share with them?
Well I mean, I really think thatknowing yourself is extremely
important to being in communionwith other people.
(38:01):
And so I would encourage you toeither read a book
or watch a movie or go to astorytelling show and immerse
yourself in the storiesof someone who is maybe doesn't
look like you or maybeexperiences different cultures
than you.
And I think that'sreally important in today's
(38:24):
society is to see the world fromother people's points of view,
because I thinkthat at the bottom we all want
the same things.
And one of the reasonsthat the world is so broken
is because we all getso invested in these stories
or how they manifest soyou and I both might care
very deeply about the safetyof our families, let's say.
(38:47):
But, you know, you havebrown hair.
I have blond hair.
You're wearing short sleeves.
I'm wearing long sleeves.
You know, we can make decisionsabout each other based
on those things.
And they're completelybased on only our things.
You know, if I'mmaking decisions about you
based on what I think withoutchecking in with you,
(39:07):
I'm really justas we like to say, I'm out of
my mind. Right?
When you're having conversationwith someone who isn't
in the room, you're outof your mind.
So but I have seen through doingthis storytelling.
So for years, people change sodramatically, myself included,
because of what they learnnot only about other people
or other cultures, but thenselves also as a as a result
(39:30):
of seeing the world throughsomebody else's eyes.
Do you still travel a lot?
Let's see.
We try.
It's not the same.
So my partner is he's got aregular job where he gets
a couple of months off,a couple of weeks off, sorry.
And so I don't go off for monthsat a time.
(39:51):
But you know thatthat's happened
before I met him, reallyafter my last trip to India
in the book.
And we hadn't met.
It was years beforewe would meet.
And, you know, I really alsocome to the realization like I
probably never needed to goanywhere to have all of this.
All of these thingshappen, right?
Anything Can becomean opportunity to learn
(40:13):
and to grow if you'reopen to it.
It just so happens some peopleseem to think that they're more
open to it when they travel.
I mean, I think a lotof people I'm going to
put myself in this category,romanticize going someplace else
as an opportunity to start overor somehow be different.
But that's not what happens.
You get there and you arestill you.
So, you know, I love traveling.
(40:34):
We just got we went toItaly this year, which was
really phenomenal.
But we also we justwent to Key West a couple of
weeks ago, which wasI loved it like, you know,
it doesn't need to be.
I'm going off to immerse myselfin some other in some
other culture, but I stillreally love it.
And I am looking forwardto the day when he and I can do
(40:55):
some travel to, say, Indiaor Thailand, because it is,
I think, an importantexperience to be
in a culture where the languagedoesn't even use
the same lettersthat you do then.
And so everything isyour whole reality must shift
in order to survive inthat experience.
(41:17):
That's the the mind in acompletely different space,
mind, body and spirits hearingbody and spirits.
Yes. Okay.
So what's in the future for you?
Well, I I'm writing a new book.
It's called Florida Girls.
It's a historical fiction novel.
I'm hoping not to live a lifethat's memoir at all.
I never thought I wouldwrite memoir, and now
(41:40):
I've written to her.
But I do love writing.
I do love stories, and I lovemaking point through stories.
And one of the reasons I gota degree in journalism
then I worked as a journalistfor many years, and one of
the reasons that I likeliked working as a journalist
was because there'sthe opportunity to tell stories.
And I feel like now the bestopportunity that you get to tell
(42:02):
stories is in a bookbecause when you read a news
article, you'resort of like, bah bah bah
bah bah bah bah bah.
You know?
And when you readsomething today that's online,
you kind of want the gist.
Whereas we're we're more willingto immerse into full length
longer works.
I think it's really the oldcertain stories like there's
(42:23):
I couldn't even begin toto tell you about American
lady creature or blissfulthinking with the kind of depth
that you get from readingthe books.
You know, it's just it's nota soundbite.
The idea of likehow I discovered
how I had maternal internalizedmisogyny.
Again, even though that'sthe theme of the first
book, it's very difficultto isolate that thread
(42:46):
which runs throughout the bookand again, which is not
a sentence anywhere in the book.
And the second, it's howI internalized wellness culture
and allowed it to not dictatewhat I thought it was supposed
to look like in the book.
Well, your book was very good,blissful thinking, and I'm
going to go back and thank youfor enjoying it.
(43:08):
So we are going to readYour Lady Creature, and I'll be
looking forwardto your new book.
When do you think that'll becoming out about Florida Girls?
Sometime in the next year.
I'm not sure when exactly.
So soon, and hopefully I canget a little trip together.
So I can come seeour storytelling and say, Pete,
that would be fun.
(43:29):
All right.
Well, so nice talking to youand sharing your story with.
We like You.
And yeah, I really appreciateyou coming on the show.
This is Angela Grayson fromthe Loving Life Fitness Podcast.
To help others in their fitnessjourney.
(43:52):
It’s all possible! It’s timeto wake up.
Here we go.
This is Angela Grayson fromthe Loving Life Fitness Podcast.
To help others in their fitnessjourney.
It's all possible! It’s timeto wake up.
(00:35):
Here we go.
Hello, everybody.
This is Angela Graysonfrom a Loving Life
Fitness Podcast where we talkto professionals and everyday
people about theirfitness journey in life.
Or maybe they'd like to talkabout things that help others
to live their best life.
(00:56):
Okay.
And today, we'll be talkingto L.L.
Kirchner about her lifeand her journey and the stories
that she's written.
So, hi, How are you doing today?
I'm good, Angela.
How are you?
Oh, I'm doing great.
Happy and excitedto hear your story
and have you share it withmy listeners.
Let's go back to the beginning.
(01:17):
When you were a young womangrowing up, what was your life
like back then and maybe how itinspired you to become
what you are today?
Well, you know, it's funnybecause I grew up probably on
a trajectory that might nothave included indoor plumbing.
I, I landed in rehab by the timeI was 19.
And it wasn't because myparents sent me.
(01:39):
I actually dragged my own buttinto into a rehab facility
when I was in college.
But, you know, my dad owneda health club, which is
an interesting backdrop to,you know, becoming a burgeoning
alcoholic and drug addict.
And he had quit his, you know,job in corporate steel in order
(02:00):
to run this business of his own,which was really unusual.
Or back then, peopledid not have, you know, the
entrepreneurial hustlewas not a thing so much then.
I mean, sure, you hadmom and pop stores, but,
you know, quittinga corporate job to open a health
club was weird.
But I was definitely aroundfitness trends from a young,
(02:22):
young age, but veryfrustrated by my mom.
What I saw as my mom's sort ofpassive acceptance
of all the things that mydad wanted to do.
And I kind of thought,I'm going to do the opposite,
you know, whichI don't even know.
You know, kids are.
The thing is, is I hadstarted exercising
from a young age when I wasvery young.
(02:42):
I was trying to impress my dad,who was always into fitness.
And I would try to runand pretend I was sporty.
And I'm not a super sportyperson, but if I don't
exercise, my body is almost likeI rusts or something,
you know, is just doesn'tfunction well.
I discovered that reallyin my thirties when I
moved to Qatar, which is,you know, the subject
(03:03):
of my first book, American LadyCreature, where I wind up
living in the Persian Gulf.
I've been working,not working out and just
getting more and more miserable.
I don't have oneof those stories
where, you know, there's amassive change in like,
I didn't go from being one sizeto a radically different size,
(03:23):
nothing like that.
It was really morea question of how
I felt in my body.
And it was terrible.
I mean, I'd been soberfor a long time
at that point, so it wasn'teven that.
It was just working all the timeand not exercising
made me miserable.
And the gyms there heldladies hours while this lady
was working so I couldn'tget to the gym.
(03:45):
So I started doing yoga.
And that really, I wouldsay, changed the trajectory
of my life.
That happens to a lot of peoplewith yoga.
It's a lot of mental thingsthat go on when practicing yoga.
If you get involvedwith the books and the Buddhism
doesn't have to necessarily bedeeply, but it definitely
(04:05):
can make changes in your life.
I also know that yougot involved in meditation
pretty deeply.
Do you think thatthat had an effect on where
your life went?
Well, absolutely.
So when I was living inQatar, my my husband
ended our marriage over thetelephone.
He had gone there with me.
I actually took the job therein order to try to help
(04:28):
boost his career as a freelancejournalist.
You know what better placethan to be located at the center
of world news, right?
In 2004, the Persian Gulfwas hot in terms of all
of the world News eventsthat were happening there
when he left.
The idea was he was going to gorestarting lives back in
the United States.
And then he calledand he told me he wanted
(04:49):
a divorce.
Actually, I called him.
It's very intense.
I like to say our marriageended a lot.
Like the whole part of themarriage was, you know, I
he basically said it and Imade it happen.
But there I was.
I have this corporate job.
I mean, I was teaching yogaalready at that point, not as a
certified teacher,but as just a very
eager student, because whenI knew my husband
(05:10):
would be leaving, I signed up toteach this class because
I knew that I neededsomething more to do.
Because there's a nondrinkerswho doesn't really like to shop.
It was not a lot for mein the Persian Gulf to do.
And so I went to India initiallyand got this yoga
teacher training because to meit felt like a way of showing
(05:31):
I hadn't been just completelymowed down by this divorce.
I was not just quittingmy job and, I don't know, going
back home and gosh,what would I do at home?
People would be like, So where'syour husband?
I mean, I don't know.
You know, I didn't want to faceall that.
So I, I signed up for a yogateacher.
I was never going to teach yoga.
I mean, come on.
I was 40 years old.
(05:53):
Who's going to want to takefitness classes from a 40 year
old woman, let alone yoga?
You know, I just.
It just seemed ridiculous.
Me Which is funnybecause, again,
my dad had startedthis health club when he was
around 40.
And in a weird way, I was doingthe exact same thing.
He did the exactsame thing, sort of starting
my own business, but I didn'tdo it intentionally.
(06:13):
I went to go take thisyoga training and it was like
it gave me a deadline,like a reason to finally
get out of Qatar because Isort of like spun
around in Qatar for anothernine months.
After he left, I was like, Oh,I know what to do.
What am I going to do?
You know, I get thereand through all this
I was a smoker, right?
I had been smoking.
And, you know, I thought, I'mnever going to be able to quit
(06:35):
because I triedall kinds of ways to quit.
You know, the pill patches,the gum sometimes
all three at once.
I get to Qatar and I havea miracle.
I just quit smoking.
I do.
A few days went by and I beforeI realized, like I am a cigaret
in a few days and I have thiscarton of Dunhill
that I hang on toand I'm taking it
(06:55):
with me everywhere because Ithink, well, this madness
will end and I will want to goback to smoking.
And it just never did.
There have been a very few timeswhere I have thought
about smoking.
Very few in the last.
I mean, gosh, how many yearshas that been now?
26 to now?
You know, I don't believeI could ever quit on my own.
I truly think that wasa miracle.
(07:15):
And and so that's whatset off this frenzied
spiritual search that became,you know, the second book,
Blissful Thinking, because Idefinitely needed something more
out of my life.
And I was afraid I was goingto potentially relapse
because my heartwas just broken.
And I knew that the answerwas more spirituality.
(07:38):
And I thought, well, if if Indiacan serve up this miracle
of quitting smoking,what happens if I apply myself
just a little?
And that's, you know,basically what
the book is about,what brought you there and kept
you there was your searchfor spiritual while. No.
Yes.
Yes.
And after your divorce, you wereheartbroken.
(08:02):
I'm sure you feel emotionallybroken.
Were you looking for anotherrelationship?
Well, gosh, no, not I mean,not in the short term,
that's for sure.
I didn't start actually thinkingabout a relationship
until almost probably two yearsafter that marriage ended.
I was in unions.
(08:23):
I remember it very clearly.
It's actually a scenein the book.
I was in the Whole Foodsin Union Square, New York City.
And this couple wasjust they're just standing in a
grocery line and, you know,they're sort of
being affectionateand like rubbing
each other's backs or whatever,looking at the candles
and talking about like how it'sgoing to go in their
living room.
(08:43):
And I just was seized with thisjust like I miss
having a partner.
I came to the realizationthat no matter how crappy
my marriage went, I wanted toget married again.
I would like to have thatkind of relationship Now.
By the end of this story,I could not have cared less
if I got married again.
(09:04):
But that was a long journey toget there.
It didn't mean that I didn'twant to have relationships, but
it didn't need to looklike that.
That set off that otherkind of longing.
And again, I had I wasoperating under, you know,
that assumptionthat so many of us have, Angela,
where we thinkI seem more normal if I have
(09:25):
a relationship, people thinksomething's wrong with me
if I don't have a relationship.
And especially ifyour marriage ends
in spectacular fashion,it's like, Whoa,
son must really bewrong with her.
He had a run screaming intothe night like he had to travel
eight time zones away beforehe could let her know
that it was over.
And then there wasno explanation.
You know, it wasn't likewe lived in the same city
(09:46):
or we saw each other.
We had absolutely no reasonto connect except, you know,
some like minorfinancial things.
And that was, again, I felt likeI had to just chase and down
and get that stuff to happen.
And it was was such a dragand yet so difficult.
But did you feel likehe left you because of things
going on with you, or did heleave you because of things
(10:09):
going on with him?
Well, I mean, that's reallythe great mystery
at the center of of both books.
Really.
I had no idea.
I mean, he did grant meone one out was because
I forced his hand, likeI took home his dogs.
And from Qatar to the U.S.,he granted me an hour
long meeting to pick up his dog.
(10:30):
And he basically said he didn'tfeel like being married anymore.
Now, at this point in my life,I can say we were
not a good match.
But then, I mean, I grew upmoving around a lot.
And like I said, I was resentfulof how it looked to me,
like my mom was justkind of going along with
everything that my dad wanted.
So it wasn't an example.
It wasn't a couple.
(10:51):
It was not a like a hashtagcouples, right?
I never thought I wouldget married or have children,
you know?
And I was pretty well convincedthat if I called my mother
and said, you know, I'mI'm going to be out hard driving
career woman never married tonothing but my my job
and never having childrengentlemen like to go achieve
(11:14):
like she never she nevermade the house or you look like
it was any fun right?
She she was a very typicalseventies suburban mom.
I mean you know Erma Bombeckfamously did a survey of her
audience asking if you couldhave children.
Now, knowing what you knownow, would you do it again?
And like 78% of the respondentssaid no.
(11:35):
And I think my momwould have been among those
you know, you have to remember,birth control wasn't legal.
Abortion was definitely notlegal.
You know, it was verydifferent times, except it was
also very much the same times.
We saw a few more options,like birth control
is more accessible to unmarriedwomen.
But other than that,we're regressing.
We're going in thewrong direction.
It'll be interesting to seewhat happens.
(11:56):
You know, she didn'thave a choice.
She wanted me to have choicesand ultimately I realized that,
you know, the choicesthat I would want.
I do like being inrelationship, but, you know,
it doesn't needto look completely standard,
although at this pointin my life, I am in, you know,
(12:17):
a heteronormative standard kindof relationship.
I'm a new grandma.
Okay.
That's all pretty interestingstuff to see how your
your mom's life was going in hermarriage with the decisions
that she made or shewas forced into.
And so you wantedto live your life differently,
we see.
(12:37):
So that you could make youryour own decisions about where
your life was going to go.
One of the things that you saidyou would like to talk about
is what early menopause led youto discover about internalized
misogyny.
Explain that.
Well, first, I will saythat's really the theme of
(12:58):
the first book.
You know, how living inone of the world's
most patriarchal culturesreally showed me how I had
internalized misogyny.
But I didn't I didn't.
That sentence is not inthe book.
It's definitely a story.
But for me, you know,when I came back and again,
(13:20):
this is going way back againto the first book,
this other book just came out,but the first book,
when it came, before itcame out, when I first came
back to the States from Qatar,this was when Hillary Clinton
was running against Barack Obamafor the nomination for the
Democratic Party nomination.
And we also had John McCainjust announcing Sarah Palin
(13:41):
becoming his vice presidentialchoice, which is interesting
because if you think about itnow, they don't announce
that soon.
They're not bringing thatup to the table.
But anyway, all over the media,it was Hillary Clinton
and Sarah Palin.
They were presentedas our options.
Right?
You can be a bitch oryou can be a bimbo.
That was it.
And I would tell people,I'm just back from Qatar
and they'd be like, Oh,how can you stand it there?
(14:02):
Now, feminism also at the timewas considered a dirty word, so,
Oh, happy just in living there.
They treat women so badly there.
And I think and youreally think we're doing so much
better here.
You know, one of the many thingsthat that happened
through the course of my timein that book, I had to deal
with a lot more sexismand bad behavior, you know,
of bad behavior.
(14:22):
I was sexually harassed bya Western colleague and then
basically told I should brush itunder the rug by my Western
colleagues.
And I was treated much better.
I had much more interestinginteractions with the people
from Qatar, the Qatari,not necessarily Qatar.
I mean, there are alot of expats.
They might have been Yemenior from Bahrain or you know,
(14:44):
there's there are alot of expats there,
not a lot of American expats,which was another thing.
So I could be in a room with allthe people who maybe English
was their native language,but some of them were first
from New Zealand, so thenfrom the UK, Ireland, Scotland,
like, you know, it would be ait was a very interesting
(15:05):
time and place anyway.
So when I, when I got tothe point of it was time to,
you know, figure out where I waslike the whole idea of misogyny
and how that fit into the book.
At 38 years old, I moved therewhen I was about 38, and when
I was 39, I, I hadn't had myperiod for a year, but
(15:27):
I had also beenvery busy working.
So I went to the doctorat the urging of a friend.
It hadn't occurred to mebecause I was so busy
and he said, He's the one whoultimately told me that I was
in menopause.
I mean, this was after a surgeryto take out a cyst in my ovary.
And then after that he was like,Oh, by the way, you're in
(15:47):
menopause.
And you know, what is it?
Because the surgery that waswhat was happening.
And I was shocked.
You know, I had been angry,I had been sweaty and I had
been overwhelmed,but I was living in a desert
culture where the languagewas on my own.
You know, it was hot.
People didn't understand mewhen I spoke.
(16:08):
And my friends and familylive eight times on the way.
This is very muchmimics menopause.
Like I had no idea that I wasin menopause.
So I woke up to the the factof being menopausal and,
you know, then my husband left.
We at first we tried to actuallylike last gasp, have kids
and we did a little IVFand that didn't work out.
(16:29):
And, you know, then he leftand I was in a country
where it's illegal to date,so I had to rediscover who I was
as a woman within theconfines of this culture.
And I really realized howI had, as I said, internalized
misogyny, because, for instance,you know, I when the dust
(16:50):
kind of settled, I was like,Oh my God, I I'm
going to turn 40.
I can't have kids,and I'm divorced.
Like, who is goingto want me now?
Who's going to want to date me?
And I had to recognize,like I had long been criticizing
the country culturefor valuing women
primarily as wives and mothers.
And I was like,I do the same thing.
(17:12):
I just decorate it a littledifferently.
You are interesting,but so telling you I read
your blissful thinking is very,very good.
I recommend that highly tothe listeners, so I'm going to
have to read the first one.
Now it's free on KindleUnlimited if you have
that so parcel.
So living in a in a culturewhere you're not allowed
to date, even as an American,I mean, you have to
(17:35):
abide by their rules,otherwise they look down on you.
Yes.
Oh, it's more than looking down.
They'll kick you outlike they're kidding around.
Yeah.
The penalties are stiff forcultural infractions.
And how long did you live there?
Three years.
And you're not allowed a date.
So where does that take you?
Where does that take your mind?
(17:56):
You're a young woman.
How could you not date?
What would you do?
I did not date.
I mean, first of all,one of the things that you have
to keep in mind is the husbandI like, he left.
So I actually went backand did a another job
there in date.
But you're also very consumedwith your work.
When I was there the first time,he had been there
(18:16):
for about a year and a half,and then I was there for about
another year after he was gone.
So, you know, I was not reallyin the mood to date.
Now, that doesn't meanI didn't want sex.
Those are two different things.
But I would travel to have sex.
I love the country.
You know, when you're traveling,this is the great thing.
This is why so many post-divorcememoirs are about travel,
because, you know,you go traveling and you're in
(18:39):
a different placeand you get to try on different
personalities and you meet lotsof people if you're
traveling alone.
I mean, I think thatif I had traveled with other
with groups or something,I would not have met nearly as
many people or addnearly the variety
of experiences that I had.
But because I went everywhereby myself, I met
(19:00):
a lot of people.
And so, no, I didn't.
I didn't date.
I did have a torrid affairwith a coworker, but he had
a girlfriend who he was doinga long distance
relationship with.
Again, this is allin the book, so I don't know
if that answers your questionor not.
Yeah. Okay.
So also you do it secretly.
I guess.
(19:20):
There's always secrets.
More fun that way, right?
Okay.
So you ended up visitingdifferent cults.
Yeah.
So when I left Qatar, Iand went to India.
Now there's a coupleof different things.
One, and I talked about thisin the book, Amanda
Mantel's book called Cultish,which defines cults kind of as
any group that sets itself offby a means of language.
(19:43):
And I think that's a veryinteresting way to look at it.
And when you thinkabout it that way,
we all participate in a numberof cults.
And I think the reason for meit's really important to
talk about that is because it'svery easy to otherize people
who end up in cults, right?
Well, that would neverhappen to me.
But, you know, you send themto an Orange City class
and they're talkingabout their splats and they're
(20:04):
you know, they're they're squatsand they're burpees.
And you know, you get awhole language going.
And how is that a cult?
Well, you might think,okay, people in cults,
they live together and theydress weird and they don't
have any money.
And that's not true of everysingle cult, Right.
So, you know, it'sjust a framework
that I quite like.
And I think one of thereasons that I didn't get
(20:24):
sucked in, as it were, to anyof the cults that I have
belonged to, although Istill belong like Orange Theory
is one of my cults.
I and yoga is definitelyone of my cults.
But the reason that I haven'tever gotten really sucked in
is one thing that my motherdid give me was a terrific
love of language.
And I just I can't like,like hokey linguistic
(20:47):
conventions kind of ata certain point, I'm like,
Oof, no, no, thank you.
Like, I can't I can'tsign up for that.
So that probably saved me.
But yeah, I went to you know,you could say the first one
was the ten daysilent meditation that I did
at the beginning of the book.
That's a kind of occultmeditation.
And in New York I visitedsome different, you know,
(21:09):
I felt like chanting groupswere a bit of a cult.
And then when I went back,that's when I went to the sex
cult, which, you know, this isthe other thing that I like
to say about cultsis that they don't become
wildly popular because they havenothing of interest to offer.
Right.
So Osho is a very famous cult.
This is the cult that I visit,the sex cult that I visit
(21:31):
in the book.
And it was made more currentlywell-known by this
recent documentary called Wild,Wild Country.
And it was all aboutthe Rajneesh.
She's so Shree Raj.
One magnet was theit was his name before he
sort of became this eponymousguru, Osho, which is what
(21:53):
his place in Indiais called in Puna.
But here in the States, whichI had no idea about this,
he had established an outpostin Oregon and that outpost
really went off the rails.
I mean, they basicallytried to take over
the governance of a small townbecause they were having
(22:14):
trouble doing the kindsof things that they wanted to do
within that town.
So they wanted to be in charge.
You know, if there'smaking rules, they're not
going to get in trouble.
And they tried to do thingslike put salmonella
poisoning into the unlessit was botulism, but I think
it was salmonella into the localfood bar.
And, you know, and I'm say likethey really went for it.
(22:36):
And the thing about it that was,you know, again,
unbeknownst to me at the time.
But the thing about Osho,his message essentially this is
what was compellingis that, you know,
we should love everybodyand that's compelling.
And he again, you cantake a look at it from his
background as aas an Indian man, which is
(22:57):
a very repressive, sexuallyrepressive culture.
You know, he thought thatsex was the closest that we get
to the state of no mindwhen we're in orgasmic
the orgasmic state.
But this is not why I went.
The reason that I wanted to goto Osho was for family,
constellation therapyand the world of other
alternative healing modalitiesthat they had.
They're like under one.
(23:18):
It's like this smorgasbord ofalternative wellness, right?
You couldn't get cranial sacralmassage in the morning
and you're doing entireVedic astrology course
in the afternoon,and then you do the mystic Rose
meditation at night.
So you can just go fromone thing to the other all day
long, which I did and Ikind of loved.
(23:38):
But then, you know, afterI'd been there for a while
and nobody was coming on to me,I was like, Wait a minute,
what's the while?
How long did you stay?
I was there for just two weeks.
But, you know, believe me,it starts happening quickly.
You're like, Wait a minute,Why is no one going on to me?
Okay, So is that whyyou ended up not staying at any
of the Colts?
Because ultimately it was okayfor the time that it lasted,
(24:03):
but then on to the next thing?
Well, no, I think that it'sthe hokey linguistic
conventions.
Right.
Talking that the languagethat they use, it's
just it's it's not meaningfulto me.
It stops being meaningfulwhen everybody's parroting
each other.
It sounds like blah, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I don't take it seriously.
(24:24):
So I can't I can't buy into it.
So I find cultish languageto be off putting.
I think it's one of the reasonswhy I don't like,
like a boot camp style trainingcrusher.
I like all that's like,okay, okay, please just let me
figure it out myself, okay?
Something and some peoplereally respond
to that, you know, the energyof a lot of people.
(24:45):
Yeah. Yeah.
They modeling and it's not likeI judge and I think that that's
a thing.
And that's one of the reasonswhy it can be easy to
end up in a cult isif you think that that's not
the kind of thing that will everhappen to you.
Are you still teachingyoga today?
Well, you know, I've taughta couple of yoga workshops
and since my this newbook came out, but really
(25:08):
with the pandemic,I kind of stopped teaching yoga.
It was really challenging,as you know, or maybe
I don't know, I don't know.
I work for the HomeShopping Network.
I'm a I'm an on air guest,so I don't often have control
over my schedule.
So it makes it very challengingto teach yoga when you can't
(25:29):
do it on a consistent basis.
And what about your meditationpractices?
Do you still go back to that?
So it's very interestingand I think I'd share with you,
but I'm not sure and I need toI need to revise this piece.
I made a quiz about figuring outwhat your ideal meditation
(25:49):
style was based on, youknow, answers to questions.
And the quiz would show youto basically a meditation style
after you answer the questions.
But then at the bottom,it's like, or you might
like one of theseand you go through the process.
And what's interestingabout that for people is
(26:09):
that and for me is thatpart of the discovery was,
oh, I don't have to justdo silent meditation
and be miserablebecause, you know,
Silent Mentation in some sensewas like the sex cult, right?
I was like, Why?
Everyone's finding their bliss?
I'll all I can findis my inner bitch.
And she is pissed, right?
(26:30):
My inner Buddha was like nowhereto be found.
Now, ultimately, and it wasat another cult.
I found my inner Buddha andit was a shock, but that's
how buried it was.
We all have all of these storiesthat we layer on top of our
innermost selves to kind ofput ourselves out there
in the world.
Mine just happened to be buriedsuper deep, and when I got to
(26:54):
it, it was a real revelation.
Again, I didn't want to saythat either because you talk
about that a little bit more,how you were able to break down
all those barriers to.
Well, I think it wasthe culmination
of all those years of searchingfor me.
Some people, they can sitin meditation and connect
with it right away, but I havea very hardwired, stubborn
(27:19):
storytelling gene, I guess.
And it's it it just coversover things.
What I recognized was this senseinside myself that was
free of stories, and it was atthe Balanced View center in Goa.
And she had been talking abouttheir big thing is to observe
everything that happens as data,not to take it personally,
(27:42):
just to see everything as data.
And when you allow that, you canallow yourself to just be
you don't have tochange anything.
You don't have to modifyanything.
And this is all news to me.
I was like, what?
I because my entiresearch had been, Oh my God,
what is wrong with me andhow can I fix it so I can never
(28:03):
make these mistakes again?
And here is this person saying,you don't have to
change anything.
You don't have to do anythingdifferently.
There's nothing inherentlywrong with you.
Now, surely I had heardthese messages before,
like I had heard someone saysomething similar to that.
This is just what resonatedfor me at that time.
And I was able then I guess itit induced enough of a
(28:25):
calm in me that I was ableto be conscious of that.
Once you're conscious of theof the inner Buddha, I think
that you can tap into itmuch more readily.
So once you have tapped into it,then I think you should
you should go for it.
And I definitely like theirpractice, which is taking
short moments where youjust release all storytelling
(28:45):
and tap into your inner Buddha.
But then I do lots of otherpractices too.
I love yoga and Nedra to kind offull scale body relax.
I love doing walking,meditation, moving meditation,
eating, meditation,and sometimes still silent
meditation.
But I no longer laborunder the belief that somehow
silent meditation is superiorand that the worse I feel, the
(29:07):
better it probably is.
Do you still find yourselflayering on the storytelling?
In what context?
So everyday life,things that go on?
Or do you try to stay?
For sure I catch myselfdoing that right.
It's just a it's a habit.
(29:28):
But I don't believe it anymore.
I think that's the bigdifference.
Like, I used toreally believe it.
The first thing that puncturedit was when I, you know,
when I got into recoveryand there's a famous passage
in the seminal recovery textcalled Alcoholics Anonymous
or referred to as the big book,where he talks about We saw
(29:49):
the world is this is paraphrase,you know, we saw the world is
our theatrical stage.
And if only everybody woulddo what we wanted them to do of
the players would moveinto the scenes as we dictate,
you know, that sort of a thing.
And I thought,Oh shit, I do that all the time
like that, really.
You know, I reallyhad this belief, like I was some
sort of master marionette playeror something.
(30:10):
And so that was a big that was abig puncture to that, you know,
that was when I was 19, butthat still wasn't the final
the FE accompli.
I think really a lotof the experiences of this book
were what led to puncturingmy belief that I'm right,
you know, and evenjust living in another culture,
you live in another cultureand you see the world
(30:32):
news reported fromsomebody else's perspective.
And I'm not talkingabout your reading one story.
I mean, everything all the timeis this other cultures
perspective and the next thingyou know, you're seeing things
differently, too.
I remember I'll never forget I'min the airport in Germany
and this woman walks byin a mini skirt and like a
(30:52):
halter top.
And I thought, Cover yourself.
You know what I mean?
Because I was so used to beingin a culture where women
were wrapped head to toein black and fully covered.
And I also dressedvery covered up because I didn't
want to be judgedfor exposing flesh on my butt.
(31:13):
It's like I just I don't wantto deal with it, you know?
That's not the hill that Iwant to die on today.
So many other things.
Now you do a story telling oncea month, a live storytelling.
I do, yeah.
And you have one coming upNovember 30th.
I know.
This week.
Yeah.
I'm anxious to get on thereand listen to that.
(31:35):
Tell us about your storytelling.
What?
Well, you can't reallylisten to it.
It's a live event.
So, Angela, you got tocome visit St Petersburg
to go to the show.
How am I?
I love the storytellingcommunity that we have here
because it's allabout telling true
personal stories.
You know, when I firstmoved to New York,
I got involved with The Moth.
I eventually became a storycoach for them, and I just loved
(31:59):
the community that it built.
Because when when peoplego on stage and tell true
personal stories,it's not just, Oh,
here's a troll under the bridge.
It was an interesting story,my friend.
It's more like, Oh my gosh,that happened to me too.
You know, my my,I had a boyfriend dumped me
just the same wayor whatever it is.
And then people can connectand relate off the stage.
(32:19):
It made New Yorka very small city for me
and just loved it.
And it was a very casual,you know, vibe.
It wasn't like you had.
It's not like famous peopleare going on stage and doing
a performance, you know, a storyThat's part of the the beautiful
thing about this communityor the storytelling community
in general is when youencourage people to just share
(32:42):
their stories, it's different.
You know, it'snot a performance.
It's not meant tobe performative.
So you get to know people.
But this show, the thingwe're doing this
month is adulting.
Next month we'll do family.
I always do some variationon that around the holidays,
but nothing tooloaded, you know.
And so more than oneperson talk.
Oh yeah so it's I mean similarI don't know if you're familiar
(33:04):
with the moth but when yougo to a slam, you everybody
puts their name into some sortof container and bucket hat
or whatever, and the namesget called out at random
and it lasts for a certainamount of time.
Okay, So Saint Petersburgand how long do you usually
talk for?
Well, everybody gets 5 minutesto share their true
personal story.
(33:25):
Yeah, it's it's a greatcontainer one because it's it's
challenging, right.
Yeah.
But two, it's also greatif you're in the audience
and somebody is telling a storyand it's not going anywhere
and you're thinking, oh my gosh,when's it's going to be over?
You know, nobody's going to takethe mic hostage except me.
I probably taught the most.
(33:46):
Okay.
To maintain your your sobriety.
Okay.
This is something thatyou have to work really hard at
throughout your entire lifeor has it become easier for you?
Yeah, I don't know if Iwould call it hard work.
I mean, hard work as beingan active alcoholic or and drug
addict, Right?
That's hard work.
(34:06):
Yes.
Recovery is somethingthat you always have to or,
you know, I always want to bemindful of because it's
never going to be okay.
Now, we we you do itall the time, that one.
That's just not how it works.
So from that aspect. Yes.
And then, you know, when youlook at long term recovery,
the challengesare very different
(34:26):
than they are.
Like when you first get sober,it's like, oh, God,
where's my car?
Is that my urine?
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you know, when you'relike, at this point
I have 27 years of sobrietyand the challenges
are more like, Oh, I wishI didn't say that thing than my
mother in law.
Do you know what I mean now?
But it can it can createthe same level of discomfort
(34:47):
like that.
That level of discomfort iswhat makes it difficult to
to process.
So for me, I need tonot be in that state
of discomfort caused bymy own bad, unfortunate,
ill timed actions.
That's not the same as sayingyou not ever feel uncomfortable
because, you know, risk takingis all about feeling
(35:09):
uncomfortable.
And discovery is abouta willingness to feel
uncomfortable.
I would never put out a bookif I was not willing to feel
uncomfortable.
Right.
Because nothing will make youfeel uncomfortable.
Like, you know, somebody reviewof your book.
Well, that's part of growingand learning, right?
And moving on to the next thing.
(35:29):
Feeling uncomfortableand getting gas up and dealing
with the discomfort.
Oh, yeah.
So now you're living with youryour dog Hartley and
your favorites.
I hear you've got Hartleywith you, too.
Yes.
Keep our pets close by.
Yes.
He's smaller, though, so youcan't really see him.
He is fading himself right now.
(35:52):
And I like the way you callyour husband.
Your favorite husband.
Yes.
That's so far.
So far.
So far.
And where did you find him?
Did you find him abroador did you find him at home?
No, actually, we met herein Florida, which
I certainly would never haveimagined.
(36:12):
You know, and it's I kind ofglancingly referred to it
at the end of the book, but notreally head on, because
it was really important to menot to tell a story
where the happily ever afteris based on getting into some
other relationshiplike that to me is incredibly
not satisfying because Ithink, well, you might
(36:35):
just end up having thesame problems that you
had before.
And like I said, I start offthinking that's going to
kind of show that I haveovercome my obstacles.
And I at the end,I recognize really that that is
is not an indicatorof obstacles in life, is to have
(36:56):
a relationship.
It's just it's just notthe most important thing is
to have that comfortin your own skin, no matter
what is happening, becauseuncomfortable things will always
be happening, whether it isto improve yourself
by working out or taking adifferent job or, you know,
staying put even.
And that can be veryuncomfortable.
(37:18):
Yeah, life is a journey andno matter where it takes
us, we have to work our waythrough it.
And that's part of it.
That's a big part of it.
It's not always about thedestination and getting
to the end, because thenthe what?
The journey has to continue.
That's right.
Yeah.
All right.
I always like toask the question
(37:39):
if you would like to give a goalto our listeners to reach for
so that they can live theirbest life, what would you like
to share with them?
Well I mean, I really think thatknowing yourself is extremely
important to being in communionwith other people.
(38:01):
And so I would encourage you toeither read a book
or watch a movie or go to astorytelling show and immerse
yourself in the storiesof someone who is maybe doesn't
look like you or maybeexperiences different cultures
than you.
And I think that'sreally important in today's
(38:24):
society is to see the world fromother people's points of view,
because I thinkthat at the bottom we all want
the same things.
And one of the reasonsthat the world is so broken
is because we all getso invested in these stories
or how they manifest soyou and I both might care
very deeply about the safetyof our families, let's say.
(38:47):
But, you know, you havebrown hair.
I have blond hair.
You're wearing short sleeves.
I'm wearing long sleeves.
You know, we can make decisionsabout each other based
on those things.
And they're completelybased on only our things.
You know, if I'mmaking decisions about you
based on what I think withoutchecking in with you,
(39:07):
I'm really justas we like to say, I'm out of
my mind. Right?
When you're having conversationwith someone who isn't
in the room, you're outof your mind.
So but I have seen through doingthis storytelling.
So for years, people change sodramatically, myself included,
because of what they learnnot only about other people
or other cultures, but thenselves also as a as a result
(39:30):
of seeing the world throughsomebody else's eyes.
Do you still travel a lot?
Let's see.
We try.
It's not the same.
So my partner is he's got aregular job where he gets
a couple of months off,a couple of weeks off, sorry.
And so I don't go off for monthsat a time.
(39:51):
But you know thatthat's happened
before I met him, reallyafter my last trip to India
in the book.
And we hadn't met.
It was years beforewe would meet.
And, you know, I really alsocome to the realization like I
probably never needed to goanywhere to have all of this.
All of these thingshappen, right?
Anything Can becomean opportunity to learn
(40:13):
and to grow if you'reopen to it.
It just so happens some peopleseem to think that they're more
open to it when they travel.
I mean, I think a lotof people I'm going to
put myself in this category,romanticize going someplace else
as an opportunity to start overor somehow be different.
But that's not what happens.
You get there and you arestill you.
So, you know, I love traveling.
(40:34):
We just got we went toItaly this year, which was
really phenomenal.
But we also we justwent to Key West a couple of
weeks ago, which wasI loved it like, you know,
it doesn't need to be.
I'm going off to immerse myselfin some other in some
other culture, but I stillreally love it.
And I am looking forwardto the day when he and I can do
(40:55):
some travel to, say, Indiaor Thailand, because it is,
I think, an importantexperience to be
in a culture where the languagedoesn't even use
the same lettersthat you do then.
And so everything isyour whole reality must shift
in order to survive inthat experience.
(41:17):
That's the the mind in acompletely different space,
mind, body and spirits hearingbody and spirits.
Yes. Okay.
So what's in the future for you?
Well, I I'm writing a new book.
It's called Florida Girls.
It's a historical fiction novel.
I'm hoping not to live a lifethat's memoir at all.
I never thought I wouldwrite memoir, and now
(41:40):
I've written to her.
But I do love writing.
I do love stories, and I lovemaking point through stories.
And one of the reasons I gota degree in journalism
then I worked as a journalistfor many years, and one of
the reasons that I likeliked working as a journalist
was because there'sthe opportunity to tell stories.
And I feel like now the bestopportunity that you get to tell
(42:02):
stories is in a bookbecause when you read a news
article, you'resort of like, bah bah bah
bah bah bah bah bah.
You know?
And when you readsomething today that's online,
you kind of want the gist.
Whereas we're we're more willingto immerse into full length
longer works.
I think it's really the oldcertain stories like there's
(42:23):
I couldn't even begin toto tell you about American
lady creature or blissfulthinking with the kind of depth
that you get from readingthe books.
You know, it's just it's nota soundbite.
The idea of likehow I discovered
how I had maternal internalizedmisogyny.
Again, even though that'sthe theme of the first
book, it's very difficultto isolate that thread
(42:46):
which runs throughout the bookand again, which is not
a sentence anywhere in the book.
And the second, it's howI internalized wellness culture
and allowed it to not dictatewhat I thought it was supposed
to look like in the book.
Well, your book was very good,blissful thinking, and I'm
going to go back and thank youfor enjoying it.
(43:08):
So we are going to readYour Lady Creature, and I'll be
looking forwardto your new book.
When do you think that'll becoming out about Florida Girls?
Sometime in the next year.
I'm not sure when exactly.
So soon, and hopefully I canget a little trip together.
So I can come seeour storytelling and say, Pete,
that would be fun.
(43:29):
All right.
Well, so nice talking to youand sharing your story with.
We like You.
And yeah, I really appreciateyou coming on the show.
This is Angela Grayson fromthe Loving Life Fitness Podcast.
To help others in their fitnessjourney.
(43:52):
It’s all possible! It’s timeto wake up.
Here we go.
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